#but the way that most of the critical stuff is comparing him to other comedians is kinda pathetic lol

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

ok rant time

one of my BIGGEST fucking pet peeves is when someone (an actor/musician/comedian/whoever) has a style that is clearly influenced by another popular entertainer of some kind and instead of being like 'oh it's cool they're clearly inspired by this person' people IMMEDIATELY start bashing them with being like 'oh you will NEVER be as good as that person' or 'oh they wanna be this person SO bad' like SHUT the FUCK up fr lol

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

I wonder if you could give us your opinion (and knowledge) about a certain part from the TIME article:

His aides are keenly aware of that mission, and some give Zelensky mixed reviews. “Sometimes he slips into the role and starts to talk like an actor playing the President,” says Arestovych, who was himself a theater actor in Kyiv for many years. “I don’t think that helps us.” It is only when Zelensky is exhausted, he says, that the mask comes off. “When he is tired, he cannot act. He can only speak his mind,” Arestovych told me. “When he is himself, he makes the greatest impression as a man of integrity and humanity.”

I think it was pretty mean from Arestovych to say something like this. Zelenskyy's enemies are going to use this against him.

Like...are they having some kind of old feud or something?! It's just such an odd and weird statement to make during times like this. And also kind of offensive.

Alright. I'm going to answer that in two parts (and it's going to be a long one - I also hope this will make some kind of sense because there are a lot of thoughts I wanted to put in this answer, and it was somehow difficult to say it in English).

About Arestovych

Look, I'm going to be honest. I'm not his biggest fan for several reasons. Mostly because I think he has a rather…odd…way of saying things. While I get what he's trying to say most of the time, I think he manages to say things in a somewhat arrogant/offensive way or just in a really weird way, so people misinterpret it. Not to mention that he has some…questionable views on specific topics and a really blunt way of saying things.

I still don't get why he's part of Zelenskyy's team. This is probably because Zelenskyy wants all kinds of opinions. Arestovych certainly offers some contradicting views compared to other people's opinions in Zelenskyy's team.

So...about that part in the TIME interview.

I get why Arestovych said this, and I get what he wanted to say, but I think he said it in quite a disadvantageous way. So yes, the Kremlins will use that against Zelenskyy since they try to reduce him to "just being an actor" the whole time. Did he do Zelenskyy a favour with how he said it? No. Did he do Zelenskyy a favour with what he actually wanted to say? Kinda yes.

Let me explain because even if Arestovych said it in a pretty wrong way, he's not wrong about it entirely.

When Zelenskyy announced his candidacy, he was mostly known as an actor and comedian. He was also mostly known for playing the president in SOTP.

He was always open (to a certain point) about his (private) life, mainly because there is nothing to hide: He's a good human being, he has an "impeccable" character, has a lovely and sweet family and believes in Ukraine and being able to make it a better country. Hooray. That is what people knew about him and how they viewed him. Because despite all the fame and money he always proved over the years, he's still a regular guy like them. He's like everybody else, and he doesn't attempt to be something he's not. You get what you see and what's the first impression. He can openly talk about his strengths and flaws and the mistakes he made in life.

Well, all of this works perfectly if you're an actor/comedian/celeb and want to stay down to earth and if you're really just like that. People liked (and voted) for him because he was different. He was normal, almost boring. No scandals, no drama. He wasn't a career politician. He did the whole campaign differently. While Poroshenko and everyone else did the usual stuff, he played his shows, shot SOTP season 3, toured with his team and released videos and pics on social media. When his opponents made fun of him (like him being a clown), he laughed about it, didn't take it personally and made fun of them making fun of him (like when he started the "Clown Challenge"). When Poroshenko accused him of not having a program, he created one - based on what the people wanted and not mainly what he wanted. When Poroshenko criticized him for not being in talk shows and political debates, Zelenskyy did what he does best: he entertained people. So instead of some boring talk show, no one would watch, he invited everyone to the stadium. Instead of trusting the media owned by enemies and opponents, he used social media and created his own content. He barely gave interviews or press conferences. (Which turned out to be a problem sooner or later because they looked for revenge and wrote negatively about him all the time - but's that another post.)

So basically, Zelenskyy proved over and over again that he's not like anyone else, like all the other politicians and certainly not like the previous presidents. That he's just a regular Ukrainian who's ruining for office, loves his country and wants to change things for the better. And in SOTP, he proved he could be president.

Well…all this worked perfectly fine during the campaign. And then he became president. And that was a problem.

Because suddenly Zelenskyy had two problems:

He's not Goloborodko.

He's Zelenskyy.

People who voted for him partly did that because they saw Goloborodko in him. Goloborodko solves problems in Ukraine quickly and easily. He walks in and announces what he's changing. He tricks the "bad" guys. He may be a bit awkward, but in the end, everything plays out in his favour, and he wins because he's also a bit smarter than everyone else in the room. And politics are a relatively easy to understand topic in the show.

Unfortunately, this is not how reality works. And that was a problem for Zelenskyy. Because people held him accountable to Goloborodko-standards, which he never could fulfil. Because in real life, he can't change laws just like that. Oligarchs are not that easy defeated. Corruption is not over when you stop one person. And while Zelenskyy may be smart, there are also other intelligent people in the room, trying to trick him into making mistakes and setting up traps for him.

People had such high standards set for him that it was impossible to reach them. People didn't expect him to make mistakes. And when he did, he lost the support.

So during the past 2 1/2 years (until the war), Zelenskyy struggled with his role as president. And the whole world could see it.

I wouldn't call him naive because that wouldn't quite catch it. But I think Zelenskyy imagined this would be a lot easier than it actually was in the end. I think he overestimated his power and ability to change things a bit and underestimated people in general. People who previously worked for or with him switched sides after the election when he didn't do what they wanted him to do. Or when he turned out actually be different from the previous presidents. Or when he didn't tolerate certain behaviour. His enemies also made sure to make his life as difficult as possible and tried to stop the progress and sabotage him whenever possible.

So while Zelenskyy deeply loves his country and is 100% committed to his job…he had no idea how to be The President because he's still a regular guy. And that was not only a problem for him but also for the world, hence why literally everyone underestimated him. So now everyone is surprised about what he is capable of (not to mention that not many people took him seriously, listened to him, or decided to believe the lies and just repeat them). It's basically what his wife says about him right now: She and Zelenskyy's friends always knew he would make a good president. But the people and the world didn't know that.

I think Zelenskyy learned in quite a hard and painful way what it means to be The President and that he either has to change parts of himself to be the president or find another way to be the president. Because you can't make faces during a press conference with the American president, despite that guy being a lunatic and talking bullshit. You can't just release videos and state your opinion on your social media as president. You can't just go on a vacation after a business trip as president. You can't do an opening speech at an international conference like you would do an opening speech during a show when you're the president. You can't pose for official photos like you're on the red carpet. … … …

The world has a very clear image of what a president should look like. How he should dress, what he's supposed to say or not to say, how he's supposed to act and what he's supposed to do. It may be a problem that we're too used to the presidents we all know, and we're not more open-minded to new presidents like Zelenskyy. But we have a specific idea about how someone should be if he's the president. And Zelenskyy didn't do any of what we expected. He was just himself, saying whatever came to his mind and not being very presidential at the same time. This is admirable - that he stayed true to himself - but still, a problem if you're the president of a country. Especially if you want to achieve things.

And while being himself gave him votes, it was now a problem as president.

You can actually see quite a difference during the first 2 1/2 years of his presidency. Every time he has to be the president, he acts (as president). He isn't the president at that moment, but he gives the people what they want. Basically, what Arestovych said in that TIME interview.

And when Zelenskyy acts to be the president, he's much more reserved. He holds himself back. He says things diplomatically. He acts presidential because that's what people want. When you watch speeches and he acts as president, you can see that he's not really relaxed. Never. He's pretty tense. Constantly aware of the cameras around him and people watching him. You can see him getting nervous and always looking around the room. Trying to keep a poker face. His speeches are also "polished" and very diplomatic, polite and what you would expect from a president.

Because he learned to act as the president a hard way.

Especially during his first year, he had some kind of reality check on what it meant to be The President. In the beginning, he acted as president like he was used to it as an employer. He has a problem with someone? He openly addresses this and talks about it. There is some problem? Let's name it, and let's talk about it. Someone misbehaves and is showing bullshit behaviour? Zelenskyy is calling that person out.

That works if you're the employer, but not if you're the president. During his first year (1 1/2), he fought with many people openly (he also still did that later, but not as much as before). Not only politicians but all kinds of people because he openly criticized them. He was not only losing sympathy with that, but it also stopped him from changing things in the country for the better. Because on the one side, his enemies tried to start fights with him to discredit him and keep him busy. On the other side, he scared supporters away with his behaviour. They began to work against him and his plans.

He started to have friends around him who worked for him and advised him because he could count on them. But he also learned to act as The President. And "act" because he can't just change who he is as a person. And he doesn't want to do this. So he acts as the president everyone wants and expects.

What he probably only slowly realized (and we're back to Arestovych's statement): while being himself is his biggest weakness, it's also his biggest strength.

He has his best "president moments" when he is just himself. Not when he interacted with politics or other politicians. But when he was the president and talked with other regular people. When he's just himself. When can say whatever he wants. When he can openly show empathy and genuine interest in things and his country and people. When he can do whatever he wants. When he can be the leader of the people and not of the country. That's also when he had his greatest speeches. When they were open and honest and when he could interact with people. Say things without having to pay attention if he's diplomatic or not.

When he sits in someone's kitchen, with no shoes and talks with that person. When he hosts a barbecue with reporters, dressed in jeans and a shirt. When he posts selfies from trips. When he goes grocery shopping like everyone else. When he goes to the theatre or visits the Christmas market with his wife. … … …

That's when he's the most authentic. Or how Arestovych said it: "When he is himself, he makes the greatest impression as a man of integrity and humanity."

When he's Zelenskyy, the president. And not Zelenskyy, THE President.

So yes, it took Zelenskyy a long time to understand his role as president and find his peace with it, understanding that sometimes he has to act as president and sometimes he can just be the president. And ironically, he needs both sides during this war.

Because while President Zelenskyy makes a big impression on the world stage, making sure his country gets weapons and money while he delivers mind-blowing and impressive speeches (as well as video addresses)…he has his biggest (and most human) moments when he's just Zelenskyy. This guy is president of a war country. His speeches in parliaments may be part of history books one day, but what people will keep in mind are his human moments. When he needs ammo and not a ride. When he called Russians "bastards". When you could see the grief and horror during his Butcha visit. When he talks about his possible death or how he misses his family and what it's like to live like that during the war. When he's still making jokes, he's humble and kind despite and after everything that happened to him. When he's holding back tears. When he just says what comes to his mind in his video addresses and selfie videos and doesn't control his movements or face, and slams his hand a bit too hard on the table because he's angry or when he's visibly moved or when he shows a little smile because he's happy about something or when he is completely exhausted but still shows himself working, loving, being thankful and optimistic Ukraine is going to win. … … …

So yes, Arestovych is right. While President Zelenskyy (when he acts) may help the country get weapons and money, the regular guy Zelenskyy is helping much more. Because people can connect with that guy, have empathy and sympathy for him and feel with and for him. Because the regular guy Zelenskyy is making sure Ukraine still gets attention and help. And Zelenskyy is the best version of himself when he's himself. Because while this has been a problem in the past, it's now extremely helpful and a good thing.

[bosspigeon]

Carabosse et la Fee des Lilas

Prompt: 💋Drag

Pairing: Adam/Male Detective, Bonus Found Family Vibes~

Words: 5,346

Summary: Tina spends some quality time with Arlo and Unit Bravo as they prepare for Wayhaven's first real Pride festival, Tina torments her best friend and his maybe-boyfriend (as is her god-given right), and Arlo has a big think about his favorite role and what that role allowed him to explore~

CW for references to transmisogyny and implications of past trans/homophobia

Sometimes, Tina wonders if Arlo missed his true calling. His hands are surgeon-steady as he pencils delicate patterns onto Felix’s cheeks, outlining with white eyeliner in preparation to fill them in with bold colors and glitter. Tina almost can’t wait for her turn, even though Felix looks like he’s in real, physical pain with the effort of holding as still as possible. She’s no stranger to that struggle herself.

Neither is she a stranger to Arlo’s forceful, if toothless, threats, overcome as she is by fondness when he growls that he's going to draw a mustache on Felix’s face with permanent marker if he doesn’t stop bloody bouncing.

It’s pretty fun to watch from the outside. Sure, when you first sit down when he’s like this—all sharp and snappish and “stop moving or I’ll chuck you out the window”—it’s hard to keep still, but Arlo’s got this sort of quiet intensity to him when he’s focusing on something that’s oddly meditative. He’s just a soothing presence, really. Like a capybara or something. He’s friend-shaped.

Whatever weird magic it is, it’s definitely catching, because Felix looks less like he’s about to burst, like he did when Arlo was putting down the foundation, and more like he’s enjoying the attention. Tina’s not sure how long it’s going to last, seeing as Felix has given her a run for her money in the “manic energy” department, and he’s nowhere near as caffeinated as she is at any given time, but for the time being, he’s (mostly) still and quiet.

There’s music playing, quiet enough that the broody one (she knows his name, but it seems to bug him when she calls him "the broody one," which is funny, so—) only grumbled about it for a few minutes when Arlo turned it on, and even seems to enjoy sitting close enough to Arlo’s stupidly fancy stereo system to, she guesses, feel the rumble of the bass through the floor. Vampires are weird.

Anyway, it’s Arlo’s usual sad goth boy nonsense, but as quiet as it is, and with its intense instrumentals and rumbling vocals, it’s pleasant background noise more than anything.

Nate (the handsome and charming one, because of course all Arlo’s vampire friends are handsome, so she has to differentiate between them somehow) is rifling through Arlo’s bookshelf like it’s his job, and visibly struggling to pick something to read, because Arlo’s sitting room bookshelf (the one she found at a yard sale three hours away and lashed to the top of her sedan with every single bungee cord she could find at the local hardware store because it was coffin-shaped, for god's sake) is where he keeps all his weirdo occult stuff to, quote, “make people who pop by unannounced leave faster.”

And then there’s the big, handsome, stupidly fit blonde Arlo still won’t call his boyfriend, even though they’re so obvious it’s sickening, and she means that with all the love in her heart. He’s sitting in the armchair by the bookshelf, positioned so he can look like he’s reading one of Arlo’s old music magazines and totally isn’t taking advantage of the perfect line of sight of Arlo perched on the end of his coffee table so he’s not too tall to work on Felix, sitting in a chair from the kitchen. Tina sure hopes he doesn’t think he’s subtle, being a super special vampire secret agent and all.

He seems to notice her eyeing him, at least, and keeps his attention pinned firmly on the magazine, though he is definitely not reading a single word. Nate keeps browsing, the Broody One keeps brooding, Arlo keeps working, and Felix starts to hum. Arlo gives him a sharp look, but it doesn’t seem to be moving his face in any major way, so he just rolls his eyes and keeps tracing pretty patterns onto that unfairly smooth, dark skin. Do vampires do skin care? They probably don’t even need to, and that’s probably one of the reasons people like to villainize them. It always comes down to jealousy, doesn’t it?

She sighs, loudly enough that every eye in the room turns to her, and while she did not expect the sudden attention, she knows she can at least use it to entertain herself. She homes in on Adam, and smiles when she finally looks at the magazine he’s still valiantly pretending to read. There’s a familiar man on the cover, and while she can’t be bothered to remember his name, she grins. “Oh, hey! Arlo, he’s reading the one with the guy who looks like you!”

Arlo doesn’t even look up, but he huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes again. He’s going to give himself a headache if he keeps that up.

The comment does exactly what she wants it to, which is draw the attention of all the other vampires. Arlo even begrudgingly pulls the pencil away from Felix’s cheek so he can take a look, and he immediately bursts out laughing.

“Arlo!” he exclaims, slapping at Arlo’s knee. “You didn’t tell us you had a twin!”

Nate chuckles (warm and rich and handsome, if a sound can be called handsome) and turns from the shelf to study the magazine curiously himself. Even the Broody One peers over to see, a little smirk curling his permanently-scowling mouth.

“Considering he was born in the sixties, I definitely don’t,” Arlo drawls. “Tina’s been making that joke since we were kids. She’s just happy she’s got an audience who hasn’t heard it twelve times a week since she first saw my old Type O Negative poster.”

“Some jokes just get better with time,” Tina says archly. “Like a fine wine.”

“And some jokes age like milk,” Arlo fires back.

Adam tilts the magazine so he can look for himself, and his dour expression clouds over even more, brows furrowing and mouth twisting. He peers up at Arlo, studying him, then down again.

Got you. “Yeah, you’re right,” Tina says, nodding sagely at him. “Arlo’s much prettier.”

It has exactly the reaction she was hoping for. Arlo drops his eyeliner pencil and makes a strangled noise, glowering at her with his cute freckly cheeks going all red, and Adam, who is a good bit paler than Arlo, goes pink from the crewneck of his just-this-side-of-too-tight tee shirt to his hairline. Tina wants to punch the air as the other vampires snicker at them. Well, except for Nate. Nate’s not a snickerer. He chortles. It’s adorable.

“Speaking of pretty!” Felix crows once they’ve all had a laugh at their fearless leader’s expense. He points to his own face with both hands, dancing in his chair, and Arlo sighs and rolls his eyes again, bending to pick up the dropped pencil. Luckily, the tip isn’t broken, so he can get right back to work, once he’s given the young vampire a moment to get his wiggles out. He settles, sitting on his hands and pursing his lips when Arlo gives him a dry look. He hovers back in with the pencil, and then Felix blurts out, “How’d you get so good at this anyway? Well, I assume you’re good at it. I haven’t seen it yet.”

Arlo doesn’t say anything. He just looks at him, pencil poised, until Felix pinches his mouth shut with a quick little apology. Once Arlo’s satisfied his canvas is actually going to hold still and keep quiet, he gets back to it. “My school was pretty small, especially compared to the bigger-name performing arts schools out there,” he says after a moment of quiet focus, tracing the outline of a heart around one of Felix’s eyes. “Our department didn’t really have a huge budget, and workspace was at a premium too. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for performances before someone else had to use the theatre, so we all did our own makeup at once, for the most part. Sometimes we’d help each other out, because we all had our strengths and weaknesses.”

He pulls back the pencil, squinting critically at the heart like it’s not completely perfect. “Demi was the best at laying the groundwork, and at matching colors to our costumes and complexions. Viv was the best at coming up with concepts and making sure we looked like a matching set. Wendi could do insane prosthetics, and was the best at bullying our department head into giving us the money for them. I had the steadiest hands, so I always did the eyes and the details.”

“Was Wendi the one who did your Dracula look?” Tina gasps. “That one was so cool!”

“Dracula?” Felix blurts. Tina doesn’t miss how the others perk up with interest too.

Arlo glares at him, and he shrinks back with a sheepish little grin. “Yeah, we did Dracula, uh… second year, I think? That was when Tilly transferred in and started doing our choreography. She’s the one who got Professor Dacey to let us do less classical stuff and start branching out a bit.” He glances briefly at Tina, staunchly ignoring the way Felix pouts at him for dividing his attention. “And, yeah, Wendi did the prosthetics for that one.”

“She’s got to be magic,” Tina asserts. “She managed to make your sweet, mopey face look so scary.”

Felix and Mason both snicker at that, and Arlo’s mouth goes all lemon-sour pinchy, like it always does when she calls him a sad puppy man, or any variation thereof.

“Take a lap,” Arlo says to Felix. “Don’t touch your face.” He jerks his head at Tina when Felix bolts to his feet and starts zooming around the flat to get out some of his energy. “Your turn, if you’re done being a comedian.”

“I’m never done,” she says with a sunny smile, but she bounces over to take Felix’s place in the chair and closes her eyes serenely so he can start on her makeup.

“And, God, do I know it,” he grumbles under his breath, knowing full well she can hear him, and so can everyone else in the room, too.

“Do you have pictures?” Felix hollers. He’s dipped into Arlo’s studio, and he’s making no secret of rifling through the desk in there, drawers slamming and paper rustling.

Arlo tips his head back so when he sighs, loud and dramatically long-suffering, he’s not blowing his breath right in Tina’s face. She appreciates the gesture. “Bottom right drawer,” he calls back, resignation thick in his voice. Given how long he’s been putting up with Tina—and Felix might just be Tina’s second platonic soulmate (Arlo, of course, being the first)—he already knows that keeping quiet is just prolonging the inevitable. Tina opens her eyes briefly to see Felix come sailing out of the studio with a thick leather-bound album held triumphantly over his head.

“Oh, I haven’t seen that in years!” she coos happily.

Arlo bops her on the forehead pointedly with a sponge covered in foundation, and she closes her eyes obediently.

She hears Arlo’s antique sofa creak as Felix plops down onto it, rifling through the plastic pages. “Aw,” he whines, “no baby pictures?”

“I can’t imagine him ever being a baby,” Mason snorts, and he sounds closer than he was before. Tina knows better than to open her eyes while Arlo’s in the zone, though. He’ll bop her with something less soft than a sponge next time. “I figured he’s just always been a giant.”

Felix laughs, high and chiming. “No wonder Agent Priestley’s always so sour, then,” he says. Tina giggles, and it becomes an inelegant snort when Arlo bops her again on the nose.

“Ask Rebecca if you want to see my baby pictures,” Arlo mutters blandly, and Tina can feel the weight of his attention. “I doubt she has many after age two, and the ones before I’ve barely seen.”

Tina’s not a super-special supernatural secret agent, but she tries with all her might to will someone to change the subject before things get weird. Now’s as good a time as any to learn telepathy.

Felix, heart of her heart, interrupts what’s shaping up to be a real prize winner of an awkward silence with a loud gasp. “Woah!” he exclaims, and pages crinkle as he presumably holds up the book for Arlo to see. “Who’s this? Did you do her makeup too?”

Arlo’s hair rustles as he turns his head away from her, and then the hand on her cheek freezes. Tension radiates through every inch of his body, practically leaching into hers. She cautiously opens one eye, and sees Arlo sitting up impeccably straight, stiff as a board and staring at Felix like a deer in the headlights. He swallows so hard she can see his throat move. “Um,” he says, stilted and strange. “Yeah. I did.”

Tina opens both eyes and squints at the photo album. Oh.

Felix looks at the sudden strain in the way Arlo is sitting, the tightness of his posture, and looks quizzically down at the picture again.

Tina remembers that performance. She remembers Arlo dancing (ha) around the subject when she asked him teasingly if he was going to be playing the prince, who was the lead, was he excited to kiss a pretty girl?

She can’t remember the character’s name, not so many years after the fact, especially since they were all weird classical nonsense, either Latin or French or some mishmash of the two. But she remembers the costume. She remembers waiting with bated breath to see Arlo onstage, to stand and scream and cheer obnoxiously loud in support of her best friend. She shot to her feet the second she saw his obvious silhouette rise from a feather-bedecked black chariot, head and shoulders taller than anyone else onstage. The music swelled, lightning flashed, and then when the spotlight hit him, she was so stunned she plopped right back into her seat with her jaw on the floor.

Arlo’s always been one of those guys that straddled the line between pretty and handsome. Long, lustrous hair and eyelashes she would kill for, cheekbones that could kill, a defined jaw, a proud nose, and intense eyes she could only call sultry—if she hadn’t known him since they were both weird, gawky brats, she’d probably be half in love with him before figuring out she wasn’t his cup of tea. But seeing him onstage was always an adventure. He threw himself into whatever character he played, put his everything into them, from the costume to the makeup to the performance. He just became the character, and in a way that was so very Arlo, all that intensity and focus channeled into an act that completely stole the show, in Tina’s humble and completely unbiased opinion.

Carabosse! That was her name!

Carabosse was no different.

Arlo’s makeup was flawless, ghost-white foundation giving him intense Morticia Addams vibes, contouring that made his cheekbones look absolutely unreal, bold black (or maybe really dark purple?) lipstick and shiny, smoky eyeshadow that made him look ethereal and wicked, with a daggerpoint cat-eye that she spent an hour begging him to teach her after the show. When he turned his head in a sharp, birdlike motion to look down his nose at the dancers playing the King and Queen, she gasped at the way his hair rippled down his back, shiny-black and woven with actual feathers that trailed back from the ornate metal circlet resting on his brow like a bird’s crest. The costume was breathtaking, too, a tightly corseted bodice and a high collar, a dramatically billowing skirt and trailing, feathered sleeves that flared like wings whenever he moved.

And the way he moved! Arlo’s dancing changed with every role, whatever he felt would suit the character. One of her favorites was always his Hans-Peter (she had a soft spot for that one, and had ever since she was little—one of the first Christmas gifts her stepmom had ever given her was little storybook version of The Nutcracker that came with a CD) because his dancing was so stiff and stridently mechanical, he looked like a real toy soldier come to life. But his villains moved with a slinking, predatory prowl she’d only ever seen in monster movies, and never in something like a ballet. His Carabosse was as beautiful as she was terrifying, and it was incredible to watch. She wanted to fling herself at him after the show and babble at him endlessly like she always did, but she spent a solid minute staring at him slack-jawed, until he shifted awkwardly and looked down, and the confident intimidation of the Wicked Fairy sloughed away to reveal Arlo underneath.

He almost melted into the floor with relief when she finally startled to babble.

She puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and he takes a slow, deep breath, offering Felix a strained smile. “Take a closer look, mate,” he says quietly.

Felix does. He looks up and squints at Arlo, and then back down at the photo. Tina has to bite her lip so she doesn’t laugh when he looks over at Adam, still holding the magazine with that metal singer that kind of looks like Arlo on it, and then back at Arlo. His mouth drops open into a little o, and he shoots to his feet and shouts, “No way!”

Mason was allowed his name back briefly, but he goes right back to Broody One when he grimaces at Felix and slinks pettishly back to his corner.

Arlo’s shoulders are practically around his ears, but he tries to keep smiling. “Yeah. Sleeping Beauty. Fourth year. I was the Wicked Fairy.”

“He was amazing,” Tina declares, shoulders back and chin tipped up challengingly. “The costume was insane, but the way he played her was absolutely, ridiculously badass.”

“You look awesome!” Felix blurts, still gawking down at the photo. He flips to the next page, and squeaks happily when he finds more pictures, from different angles, showing off the costume, the way Arlo loomed over the other dancers, the way he commanded the stage. Tina should really find out who took the pictures and send them her thanks, because they really put in the work. “Your makeup, your dress, your hair! How’d you even do that?”

Arlo laughs, and it sounds so utterly relieved, Tina’s heart breaks a little. Arlo’s always been sensitive, and for someone who dresses and holds himself the way he does, he worries more than he lets on what people think of him. Especially people he cares about. She squeezes his shoulder again, and he bites his lip when he glances back at her and smiles hesitantly.

“A lot of wire, and enough hairspray to choke a bloody cow,” he says, twisting around and slinging his long legs over the coffee table so he can face the sofa. “I think we bought every bag of black feathers the craft store had, and then spent an entire weekend painting them with this stupidly expensive embossing powder. We had to get, like, ten pots of the stuff, because the craft store only had pots the size of a quarter.”

“I admire your dedication,” Nate says pleasantly, strolling over to peer over Arlo’s shoulder. They tighten just a bit before relaxing slowly. “That costuming is superb. I’ve seen professional productions that weren’t half so detailed.”

“That would be Viv’s work,” Arlo laughs, looking down at the pictures fondly. “She took whatever cheap garbage the department had for us, raided the nearest clearance fabric rack, and worked her magic. The employees at that little craft store loved and hated us in equal measure.”

Arlo is still tense, but he’s loosening up little by little, and with him Tina does too. The easy camaraderie is soothing, and she knows how much Arlo cares about his vampire friends, so it’s got to be a huge weight off his shoulders to be able to let his guard down around them. He deserves that. He deserves to be able to be himself.

Adam standing up draws Arlo’s attention like nothing else could, and he freezes like a startled rabbit again looking up at the burly blonde vampire as he approaches the sofa. He looks a split second from bolting. Tina sits up straighter and gives Adam her most daring look, squaring her shoulders to make it perfectly clear she's ready to fight the second he opens his mouth. She’ll definitely lose, sure, but she’ll make as much trouble as she can before she goes down.

He reaches out, his hand hesitating before it touches the album’s glossy page, and he looks up at Arlo with a questioning tilt to his brows. Arlo looks like he’s barely breathing, but he nods, and Adam slips one of the pictures from its sleeve. He straightens his spine, shoulders back, holding the photo and studying it carefully. His face is impossible to read, about as expressive as a bloody brick wall. Tina’s vibrating with nervous energy. She’ll fight a vampire, though. She will.

When Adam does finally speak, his voice comes out so softly Tina almost doesn’t hear it over the adrenaline rushing through her. “You look… striking.”

Striking. Oh my god.

She wants to laugh. They’re ridiculous.

“Thanks,” Arlo chokes out, his cheeks and ears going red this time.

Oh my god. Tina covers her mouth with both hands. Arlo glowers at her. It’s a lot less threatening when he’s blushing like that. “I didn’t say anything,” she mumbles against her palms.

“Your face,” he hisses, and she yelps.

“Oh! Shit!” She pulls her hands away, and he grabs her by the chin to check the damage with a click of his tongue.

Tina thought things would get better once Arlo actually kissed the man (and maybe got a leg over, but that’s only her business when she can finally get Arlo to actually talk about if the big, beefy Adonis is as missionary-with-the-lights-off as he looks) but at least they’re not just staring longingly at each other from across the room and then getting all sad about it anymore . Thankfully, Felix seems to be an old hand at clearing up the weird tension between the two of them, chiming in a delighted, “I’ve never seen you look so scary!” as he rifles through all the pictures from the Sleeping Beauty show. “I mean, you’re pretty scary when you go all furry, but also, you sort of just look like a big lanky puppy, because it’s just you, you know? This is someone else! Who is she! She's so cool!”

Arlo sighs and turns around to fix whatever Tina’s ruined with her foundation, and throws himself back into dolling her up. Thankfully, the actual festival’s not for a while yet. She complained about the unnecessarily early start when Arlo suggested the time, but now she’s glad he’s such a persnickety prick about scheduling. “I had a lot of fun with it,” he admits, shrugging his shoulders. “The original script notes said to get, y’know, sort of silly with it, but I wasn’t a big fan of that angle for a character like her. Yeah, I wanted to be campy, but not in the way…” He purses his lips. “Okay, well, Nate probably knows this, but a lot of classical ballets that have a female villains do this thing with them that I hate.” He frowns deeply, patting at Tina’s chin with gentle ferocity. “ An evil female character is supposed to be sort of… sort of a cautionary tale, I guess? Like your typical bitter spinster crone, the old hag, or the wicked stepsisters, things like that. So they’ll specifically cast a male dancer and put them in bright, gaudy facepaint and garish costumes that are supposed to be cartoonish and ugly, that you're supposed to find funny, to show you that this character is bad because she’s indelicate and mannish, and that’s why she’s evil.”

His mouth twists around the words, and he looks up, back at the vampires, leaving Tina a moment to really appreciate that Arlo’s comfortable enough with them to do what he’s only ever really done with her—which is ramble about something he’s passionate about. It’s always fun to watch. He turns back to her, and she just wishes his hands weren’t occupied, because he’s a big hand-talker otherwise. “I got the role because the professor thought it would be funny to stick me in a role like that, being so tall and, y’know,” he gestures vaguely to his faded old band tee and dark jeans, the thick leather cuff around his wrist. Tina doesn’t see what he really means, seeing as he looks cozy and content right now, but she gets what he’s going for. “He was expecting me to be awkward about it. The big, tough guy doing drag as the creepy crone caricature.” He huffs. “I talked with Demi about it, and we decided to say fuck that.” He sits up straighter, tilts up his chin, and looks down his nose at Tina.

She peers up at him, wide-eyed, and suddenly wonders if this is how Demi felt, playing Aurora when Carabosse looked down her nose at her like an insect under her heel.

“I thought Carabosse deserved better,” Arlo says fiercely. “If I was going to be a villain, I was going to be a damned good villain. I was going to tower over all the delicate, dainty little princesses and fairies, and I was going to be fierce. Professor Dacey wanted Aurora, and Candide, and Florine to be the epitome of sweet, delicate femininity, the ideal damsel in any classical show. Carabosse is supposed to be the complete opposite. You’re supposed to root against her, not want to be her. She’s a threat to the idea of womanhood, of the ideal feminine. She’s bold and selfish and she takes what she wants. I leaned into that. I even danced en pointe for parts of it, even though Carabosse isn't supposed to, and between the rehearsals and the actual performance, I thought my feet were gonna fall off, but it was worth it.”

Arlo smiles, and Tina is thrilled by the wickedness of it. She thinks she even sees just a hint of fang. Arlo’s been so careful about showing his teeth, ever since he told her what happened to him, why he disappeared for so long, so it's somehow special for him to feel like he can show her even a hint of what he’s become.

“Professor Dacey was pissed, afterwards, of course,” Arlo laughs, but there’s an edge to it. He seems to shrink. From Arlo to Carabosse to Arlo again. He looks down at his hands as they work on Tina more than at her face. “He didn’t, y’know, say anything he could have gotten fired over, but he did rail about being left out of planning and the budget and all that rot. Got even madder when Demi pointed out we’d spent our own money on the costumes. I think if he was tall enough to look down on me, he would have.” He snorts, a bitter curl to his mouth. Tina thinks of it painted bold, dark purple, thinks of how it would look with those teeth behind it. She wonders if he’d let her do his makeup for the festival. She’s not nearly as good at details as he is, but she’s no slouch either.

“You should have let me put raw fish in his hubcaps,” Tina mutters, just to make Arlo laugh. It works, and she beams at him.

“Would have been a waste of fish,” he mumbles, sucking his teeth. He finally picks up a bright eyeshadow palette and starts waffling over colors. He’s quiet while he deliberates, but after a while, he sighs. “I liked being Carabosse,” he says, like it’s a secret. Like he’s trying very hard not to be ashamed.

“I wish I could have seen it,” Adam says, almost dreamily. Tina could scream. “I— We could have, I mean. All of us. In solidarity.”

“Smooth,” Felix whispers.

“I’m sure it was a phenomenal performance,” Nate adds helpfully. He’s taken the album from Felix to flip through to some of Arlo’s other shows. “The passion you have for your characters shines through in just photos. It’s quite impressive.”

“You should have gone pro,” Tina mutters. “You’d be a household name by now.”

Arlo snorts and bops her with the brush. How many bops is that now? She’s certainly on a roll today. “And who’d keep you in line back here?” he teases.

Tina squints up at him and sticks out her tongue. “Like you’ve ever even tried to keep me in line, you big softie. You love the chaos, just admit it.”

“I’ll admit you to the hospital when you do something stupid and get yourself hurt again, how about that?”

They bicker like children back and forth while Arlo finishes her makeup, a wash of pink, purple, and blue eyeshadow and matching lipstick, overlaid with a lustrous sparkle to her cheekbones and a cute little black heart-shaped beauty mark under one eye. Felix gets a bi flag heart to match her eyeshadow around one eye, and then the rest is a sort of confetti splash of sparkly stars and hearts in every color. Even Nate goes for the bi eyeshadow (Bi-shadow? She should have been saying that this whole time!), making him, Tina, and Felix a matching set, and Mason consents to a very simple pan flag on his cheek. Tina suspects Adam only allows the eyeshadow treatment so he can have Arlo cup his face all tenderly, but she keeps the thought (mostly) to herself. He looks good in pastels, she thinks when she sees the finished blue, pink, and white.

Arlo draws a little heart under his eye too. The heart in Tina's chest almost explodes with warmth.

And then Arlo disappears into the bathroom, leaving the rest of them to entertain themselves while he gets ready on his own. They go through the album some more, and Tina tells them all about her favorite shows, because she went to every single one she could manage, and got Arlo’s school friends to send her videos of the ones she couldn’t. Tina Poname is Arlo Priestley’s number one fan, and that will never change. Not even now that she's got some competition.

When Arlo comes out of the bathroom, they all look up in sync, and he stands there, shifting anxiously from foot to foot under the attention, and lifts his hands in a stilted shrug. “So?” he asks, smiling nervously. He’s changed clothes, too. Tight pants, big boots, a mesh-sleeved black shirt underneath his patch-and-pin-covered denim vest. His wrists jingle with chunky bracelets, and his hair is braided neatly over one shoulder. But his makeup is what really steals the show. That insanely sharp cat-eye, of course, but one eye is done up in blue, pink, and white, and the other in yellow, white, purple, and black. He smiles timidly. “I, uh, I couldn’t really decide on just one,” he says, sticking his gloved hands into the pockets of his vest. “I’m, um, I’m not sure which one’s really right for me yet, I guess?” He shrugs again, and Tina watches delightedly as Adam stands up slowly, his eyes on Arlo with such an awed intensity she wonders if he even remembers there’s other people in the room. Arlo keeps babbling as he approaches, the words tumbling nervously from his black-painted lips. “I sort of like matching with you, Adam, and I know they’re both fine, but I—”

Adam grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, yanks him down to his level, and silences him with a kiss. Tina throws her arms up in the air with an impulsive shriek of “WOO!” that Felix echoes even louder. They high-five over Mason’s head, and he looks like he wants to throw them both out the window. Nate sits by with a pleasant little smile, which only fades when he takes note of the clock.

Adam and Arlo are still kissing, Arlo’s hands cupped around the vampire’s cheeks and Adam clinging to his vest like he'll drown if he lets go. Tina thinks she might see a hint of tongue when Nate loudly clears his throat.

They break apart with an indecent smacking noise, and Tina yelps out a sharp laugh when she sees Arlo’s black lipstick smeared all around Adam’s mouth.

Nate crosses his arms and smiles dryly at them. “Why don’t you two go fix your faces,” he suggests. “The rest of us will make sure the car is packed for the festival.”

“Um, yes. You— We—” Arlo fumbles for a bit, touching his smeared lips, his eyes just a bit dazed. He and Adam look at each other, and then flee for the bathroom together.

Tina’s never been more excited for a festival in her life.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

…the ugly. SYAC: The Master Review 4

Last post I covered much of what I consider the good or passable strips of SYAC of the pre-Dobbear era. What I have admittedly not covered yet, were three certain characters of the strip that exist beside Dobson.

Persistent Pam

 Curmudgeonly Carl

And… this guy I am not even sure has a name.

No, seriously. He shows up in like the 61th strip of the series for the first time and yet I never see his name mentioned once

All I know is that he is an accountant, who pities Dobson (for good reason)

And despite Dobson not liking alcohol, they regularly meet up in a bar as if they are some late 80s comedy duo

Funnily enough, he shows up way before Pam, who would have her premiere in these strips

 And despite only showing up in a few strips after her premiere (mostly to make “fun” of overbearing and snarky commissioners I suppose…)

 She actually managed something no other character or series by Dobson managed to get: A fanclub

 Not that she would really be of any major importance afterwards.

As for Carl, he is supposed to be something like an antagonistic embodiment of Dobson’s “old” art teachers and people being stuck in old ways, who shows up for the following strips forming a sort of arc.

In addition, it is very obvious, that Carl is supposed to be a mockery of people flaming Dobson. Not helped by the fact that THIS character sheet of him made by Dobson assures us, that there were quite a few even less “endorsing” things he wanted to name the character.

Yet funnily enough, Carl turned into such a popular character with readers, Dobson was essentially “forced” to make him reappear in other strips. Not of the “classical” SYAC strips, but he showed up as the “antagonist” to Tenku in the storydriven multi pagers. Though even antagonist is a strong word, as he is essentially more of a jerkish art teacher and college advisor who is harsh on Tenku, but actually has his best interests in mind. To the point he even offers him to be his “harsher” art critic in the years till he enters college, because he wants to see him grow artistically.

 However, Carl was also more of an “accident”. Cause when it came otherwise to tackling criticism or things that irked Dobson (and were not anime related) he would end up more or less creating strips that painted him in a manner where he would supposedly always look like “the better” compared to his opposition or mock it. Which is where a lot of the irk Dobson would earn over the years eventually comes from.

Now to be fair, I do not want to call every comic in that regard “strawmanning”, nor do I want to say that Dobson doesn’t have the right to also mock to a certain extend the mentality of certain “snobs” and so on. For example…

On one hand, I know there are people out there who think they are “special” by having the best tools at their disposal. When in reality you can achieve good results also with less expensive stuff. So mocking that sort of attitude is fine to me to some extend

BUT, when you also make down the line a comic like this…

… essentially making yourself come off as a “better” artist or person than others because you have “chosen” the better mass produced crap (btw, that is coming from someone who types this review on a Mac that runs Windows) , then the hypocrisy ends up to be rather strong with you.

 Which is also essentially the biggest issue with the strips I am about to show. The hypocrisy of Andrew Dobson. And no, I do not mean the tumblr blog by that. I mean the simple fact, that the content of some of the soon to follow strips gets kinda muddled when you take into consideration some of the things real life Dobson had said and done either at the time or in the years to come. Well that and the way how he tries to mock issues people have with his work, not realizing how he is essentially just reassuring those “silly critics” in their opinions while making his flaws more obvious to people that may have been previously unaware of them.

But enough talk, let me just show you in quick succession examples to confirm said point.

Considering Dobson’s longterm disdain for DnD you have to wonder what the joke really is outside of him portraying DnD players as ugly nerds, supposedly too geeky even for him. Which is hilarious in hindsight as he would years later become a fan of TAZ among other things.

Less hypocritical but the set up is kinda flawed. Like, you are obviously at a convention trying to sell stuff. Why would some old dude not interested in “kids crap” be at the convention anyway? Is he just bringing someone there and just wants to go, but first needs time to belittle your life choices?

 Rather hilarious in hindsight to me. Cause for someone claiming he has ideas that last for a life time and who seems rather distraught on the idea of others giving their input, he turned out to be so in need of ideas. Alex ze Pirate e.g. became from 2015 onward only defined by Dobson talking about the sexualities of his characters (and not even in comic as by that point it was discontinued, but rather in tweets and so on). Formera, which ran heavily on cheap shonen anime tropes ended up cancelled after two volumes, Cabin Rest was a failure after 20 strips, 2019 he relied primarily on cheap comics about Miraculous Ladybug and his understanding of certain genres is so bad, he can’t even think up the most basic ideas for a magical girl story.

Weirdly enough, that pitch of a garbage truck driver who fights crime? I think that could make for an enjoyable short story about a vigilante a la the Punisher or Sin-City.

 The way Dobson perceives criticism, while also essentially giving a quick rundown how he appreciated criticism in his childhood way better than in adulthood. Yeah, because criticism by your parents as a kid was always VERY constructive. (looks back at certain drawings from own childhood) brrr. And sorry Dobson, but sometimes criticism by strangers is better than criticism from friends. Cause friends may mince their words. Plus people have over time given you quite some insightful criticism aside “U SUX” when it comes to comics. You were just never willing to listen

Hey Dobson, you hear that? That is the sound of your career, dying and no one caring.

Yeah, I think someone who made such “brilliant” comedy as in these comics, totally has the right not to listen to what seems to be solid theoretical advice.

BTW, that Talus comic… I swear to god the worst “joke” Dobson ever told.

 Wow. You essentially make a point why you suck at drawing. While still not trying to change.

And as someone else once said: Don’t play with fire if you can’t deal with the heat, BLOCK-son!

This is not how I perceived your shit over the years. See, on one hand it is true that Alex ze Pirate e.g. has its own webpage to read the comic for free. HOWEVER most of his comics Dobson would hide from the start behind a paywall. The idea being that he would e.g. put a small reading sample of 10-15 pages up somewhere and then expect people to buy his comic for full price to get the rest. And you know, if you are e.g. a professionally published writer, that is fine. But when your average art output looks like THIS

And you expect people to pay more than 10 dollars for something that is only around 70 pages long while most people can get 200+ pages for the same amount of money that look like this…

 You can frankly go and screw yourself.

On one hand I get that the joke is meant to be, that as an independent content creator you may find yourself in a weird spot where your “child friendly” work may be put in a palace between edgier stuff other creators sell at conventions. On the other hand, I find it rather insulting in hindsight, that self declared feminist Andrew Dobson portrays such competition as either psychopathic murderers or stereotypical cartoon bimbos. If modern day Dobson saw the same strip by any other person, he would be insulted on behalf of the female that she is portrayed as a bimbo, when she could also be a very smart and attractive woman who knows how to tell brave and sexy stories.

Also, I have read your “child friendly” stuff, Dobson. I would call Atea or Alex abusive bitches who like to bully orphans but child friendly? Not to forget that your work is so basic and shallow in depth, it’s like the someone tried to create a chimera out of some of the worst traits associated with Dora the Explorer, 80s toodler cartoons and the Fairly Oddparents.

I frankly hate this theory on comedy. It is true, a lot of comedy can be deprived from conflict, misunderstandings etc. Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and other cartoons as well as screwball comedies such as Rat Race can depend on it. Heck, one of my favorite comedians of all time is Christopher Titus, who based his entire career on the misery and absurdity of his life.

But comedy is not just defined by misery and conflict.

There are for example also the following theories when it comes to comedy…

And to get back e.g. to Titus, yes, he has build a lot of his comedy on the bad stuff that happened in his life. But he is also someone who in his comedy has build a lot of punchlines on the absurdity of certain situations he has been in life but which in a way have enriched his life positively.

 What I am trying to say is, comedy (and entertainment in that regard) does not just have to be defined by misery. And all things considered Dobson, you could have really tried to also just make comics wherein either you or your characters are just happy with their situation in life.

For example, this page from an Owl House fancomic?

I think it holds more entertainment value than your “joke” right here, despite not even telling a joke.

Simply because as a page overall, it tries to convey a positive emotion. Which is more than I can say about the strip.

Because of a lack of different level of thickness regarding your lines, which would trick people into perceiving depth, the fact that the fill bucket and shade layers can only do so much to cover for the rather monochromatic dull nature of your comic, the fact that your characters are not really all that complex and look rather simplicstic even compared to stuff from a comic like this…

And that is just coming from the top of my head as someone who never studied art. If any reader has something to add, I am willing to listen

And considering you could in later years never keep up to any release schedule, which among other things resulted in only three SYAC strips in total being released in 2016, I say go fuck yourself. Not to forget that even some of the worst newspaper comic strips out there tend to actually find a decent following and good jokes eventually, otherwise they would not manage to stay popular for years, if not even decades.

As someone who has worked internships a lot in life, I just want to say fuck you in all our names. Glad to see you having just as much respect for interns than any other scumbag on the planet. Probably even less respect, cause you know, in some places interns tend to get paid.

Also, there is supposedly an entire real world story going on about Dobson having worked at his former university at the time the comic came out and Chaz is based on a fellow intern.

Things are unfortunately rather vague in that regard and only hold up by demonstrative evidence such as the name of Chaz showing up in certain pages of the university and Dobson’s internship being mentioned somewhere.

Well, would you look at that: People have different opinions on your stuff.

There are ways to draw memes funny and then there are ways to fail at them

 You failed.

Funnily enough, that comic rings a lot truer to text than you expect. Considering how Dobson would often emulate certain aesthetics in his comics of shows that were rather passee by the time he published his stuff, plus how he will obsess over certain trends and games for years to come (like Skyrim or his Quiet Hate Boner) while also being unaware about current trends (how do you e.g. not have heard of My Hero Academia by 2018 at least once by accident?) Dobson has always been kinda late to the party. Missing the “zeitgeist” of nerd culture and as such never quite finding an audience.

Yeah, what Pam says. Not helped by the fact that yes, the floating eyebrows are real. Look at some earlier sketches or “professionally published” comics by his and you will see that each time characters get excited, their eyebrows will suddenly split into sets of three and float higher than Pennywise’s victims.

Ironically, that fits real life Dobson at the time and later on even more so than this comic version did. Sorry, but what am I supposed to call a person who has an hate boner on anime for years for superfluous reasons, made Danny and Spot a “gaming webcomic” deliberately to piss on non Nintendo fans and has admitted in some by now deleted youtube video, that he kept a list of usernames from an old forum just to remember even years later the people that were mean to him online?

 Fuck both of you. I do not expect the Sixtin Chapel in the background, but something to filll up the empty space behind you is at times needed.

The comic here is actually called politics. … ironic how things changed once a certain reality show host turned president.

Jesus Christ. I am not even that much of a Transformers fan (Prime fan for life however) but even I know that this is not supposed to be what you design the head of a Transformer like. Not even if they ever produce the Transformers equivalent of Teen Titans Go.

Too bad you still can’t stand the heat, otherwise you wouldn’t have completely disappeared last year.

When you know you are in a no win situation, and still manage to choose an even dumber option to escape. I really don’t get it. I just think the Portal reference makes the comic dated and Dobsn’s attempt at a smug face looks so stupid. Like his cheeks are falling in and his mouth is about ready to get raped by a garden hose or something.

Yeah, considering Dobson’s later constant need for safe spaces and to be in control of a situation and the narrative, which led to so many blocks over the years… if you know anything about Dobson, how this comic becomes harsher in hindsight is rather self explanatory. I just want to say one thing: There is a difference between genuine agoraphobia and just wanting to be by yourself. And I think Dobson just prefers the later on average. Which is okay, but humans still need to interact with other human beings in one form or another, even just for the sake of keeping their mental health stable. Why do you think are so many people getting depressed in times of covid lockdowns, despite many having all sorts of technical gimmicks at their disposal to at least keep boredom at bay?

And by putting himself into a bubble like that, I think Dobson has deprived himself of some of the most basic human interaction, which was likely a severe factor in his mental degeneration over the last years.

It is still a valid suggestion! Just draw some cartoon characters or a nice fantasy scenario on a mural and earn yourself some bucks. Just be sure they are not by Disney or the Mouse will tear down the school!

… Just google up the words Andrew Dobson and Samus Aran commission by ED and you will see how this comic just further shows how much Dobson seems to actually be proud of being an unproductive asshole.

 And by the way, I know that any form of artistic work takes time. Just writing these review posts takes a lot of time for me. But that doesn’t change the fact that people should post and create stuff in a timely fashion, especially when there are e.g. deadlines to hold up too. And by the way, Sloth’s don’t have fingers, they have claws!

And that is it.

Sorry if I missed anything folks, but I just saw how many pages in word this is already filling up, so I call quits for this part here right now. I think I made my point about how Dobson trying to badly deflect arguments people may make against his art and work ethics via jokes clear enough, while also showing some posts that are either harsher or hilarious in hindsight.

Next time we will however address one certain issue about our main character, that has been not directly addressed here. In the meantime, have a little fun video that shows hopefully how entertainment and a certain amount of comedy can be gained NOT via misery.

[delusion-of-negation]

top 10 (ish) ridiculous or annoying FAQs:

(click at your own discretion)

1) "kids today rely on others to do everything"

ah yes, damn those participation trophies! if it wasn't for them my hands wouldn't be fucked, and I wouldn't need people to write for me. but seriously, stop reading boomer comics, and go outside to meet some actual young people.

2) "sus that a non-american says mom"

yeah, because it's clearly the superior version, and I'm not too patriotic to concede a defeat.

3) "sweaty, the victims of abuse by catholics are real people, stop appropriating their pain just because you want to hate catholics; plus teachers abuse people just as often anyway"

so firstly, I don't hate anybody. and secondly, regarding the fact that victims really do exist, [insert "of course I know him, he's me" meme here]; although I don't often talk much about the abuse I went through or what my religious beliefs are. but, more importantly, statements like "survivors are people" can be phrased like "some people are survivors", and when you're unable to act according to the latter (like when you don't even consider that somebody might be one) then you display a failure to recognise the former - you're projecting; a survivor can't be appropriating their own pain, but you can be appropriating it to silence one. and thirdly, teachers do abuse - the problem isn't and has never been purely religion, rather that abuse is often done by somebody in a position of trust, power, and familiarity; and that the lack of a global minimum enables totally legal abuse on top of the illegal stuff. people with access and respect have more opportunity to abuse than those without, and that goes for teachers too. but, once again, you can be appropriating the pain of survivors to deflect and silence people. please remember this before you say that shit.

4) "get help/therapy"

way ahead of you - years ahead of you. but it's not magic - people who say this often act as if you'll start behaving differently overnight. not only are some things simply beyond the ability of talking therapy to completely rectify, it also takes time and has to be selective. you've got to pick your priorities, and that's definitely not whatever ship or joke you're mad at me about today. therapy is a slow, arduous process that can't guarantee results - it isn't "anti-recovery" to recognise that, it's honesty. while I've been in therapy for a long time, it is not necessarily going to change whatever you don't like about me - whether that's because it can't, because my focus now is on more important or urgent things, or because I don't want to change that.

5a) "tell your family you ship incest, see how that goes; normal people find it disgusting"

actually, some know, and they're fine with it. in fact, one prefers sibling pairings in fiction to all other dynamics because, to paraphrase, "it's a deeper level of messed up co-dependence". so unfortunately for you, my remaining family (by which I mean those not dead or cut out of my life after abuse and so forth) actually are able to distinguish between fiction and reality. plus, my reasoning for caring if they find it gross or not pertains only to recommending books and such - their opinions do not dictate my tastes.

5b) "don't sexualise/appropriate incestuous abuse" and "I bet you enjoyed being raped" and other attempts to upset me over 5a

firstly, as I've already said here, survivors can't be appropriating ourselves. in addition, you're not owed people's history or trauma - it's not okay to require people's personal information, or else you'll send anon hate and accusations of appropriation. secondly, I'm not sexualising our abuse (not just because I write horror, and so a lot of my writing is intended to be creepy, not sexy); these stories aren't about us, they're not us at all. entire dynamics/people (fictional or otherwise) aren't all going to be applicable to us or identical to us, just because they have something in common with us; they're not us and they're not accountable to us. thirdly, the fact that people send this stuff (attempting to trigger people's trauma over ships) is so much more worrying to me than somebody making our communal imaginary friends kiss. you're trying to hurt people. and finally, to the "I bet you enjoyed it" crowd (if you're at all serious): do you think you'd enjoy being in a real zombie apocalypse, alone, afraid, and really at risk of being eaten alive? a fictional scenario does not feel remotely the same as a real one. this isn't rocket science - things that look like you aren't you; fiction isn't reality; don't send anon hate. (edit: comparable "just leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone" sentiments for yandere stuff, and anything else you decide I'm naughty for.)

6) "you'll be sent off to do manual labour once your communist revolution happens"

while I don't know why people think that I'm a communist, a dictatorial regime probably isn't going to want me to do manual labour. they're more likely to just shoot me; I'm useless and a liability. call me crazy, but something tells me that "ah yes, we shall give ze deranged cripple ze power tools" isn't the communist position.

7a) "they/them can't be singular pronouns"

yes they can, and they're used as such in both shakespeare and the bible. but you don't have to say this - I'm also okay with he/him, so you could've just used those and chilled out. also, do I look like somebody who views the rules of grammar as fully immutable and imperative?

7b) "enbies/aros/pan/etc aren't valid"

do you really think that you're going to change any hearts or minds by putting that in my ask box or under my funny maymays? chill out, it's not worth the effort - you could be planning a party (in minecraft) and having fun instead. it isn't worth my time to rant at everybody who's saying something isn't valid, updating how I'm explaining it as my opinions grow and general discourse around it evolves; I'm just who I am, somebody else is who they are - why bicker in presumptuous ways about if that's enough? it ultimately is valid, in my opinion, but that isn't an invitation to keep demanding that I debate. (edit: old posts of mine probably don't phrase things incredibly, on this or anything... I tried.)

8) "what are your politics?"

my politics are informed first and foremost by the knowledge that I'm not cut out to be some kind of leader - I don't want to be the guy who tells everyone else what to do, I just offer what seem to me like valid criticisms of how we are doing things now, and general pointers on the values and ethics that I would prefer to move towards. things like individual freedom, taking the most pacifist route where possible, trying not to give excessive power to small groups of people (governments or corporations), helping those in need even when they're not palatable, and letting me suck loads of dicks. but please refrain from decreeing me something - there's not enough information in what I said, so you'll just be filling in the blanks with assumptions. (edit: workplace democracy seems cool to me; benefits are good; fair fines and taxes; and the "sperm makes you loopy" saga: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

9) "you're a narcissist"

no, I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. joking on the internet that you're hot doesn't make a person a narcissist. the fact that I've chosen to keep my actual self-esteem issues to myself is not proof that they don't exist - you're just not entitled to that information about me. but it's also not narcissism to really like how you look. (edit: don't throw labels around carelessly too.)

10a) "kin list?"

the fabric of the universe, a zombie, dionysus, maned wolf/arctic fox hybrid, a comedian, big gay, big rock, ambiguously partial insincerity. (edit: kin list may or may not be incomplete.)

10b) "kin isn't valid/that's just being insane"

haven't we established that I'm deranged, and that sending stuff like this on anon is simply a waste of your precious time? besides, I do not care if it's invalid or insane - it's fun, I'm happy. (edit: see 7b for my opinion on sending me yet another ask with "that's invalid" in it; I'm not in the mood to discuss the nature of validity.)

bonus: "it gets better" and "trigger list?"

as I've said before, things just don't always get better for everyone - sometimes things can't be cured or even treated, sometimes they kill you; in some cases it could get better if not for a blockade or lack of time. the world is messy. it needs to be more normalised to reassure or comfort people without relying on saying that their issue will get better or be cured. it does suck to be this ill, but it also sucks to be made out to be a lazy pessimist, just because I have the audacity to not play along. and as for the trigger list, I don't like providing people with an easily accessed list of ways to hurt my feelings or harm me - upsetting me is supposed to be challenging, and thus rewarding. if you want a cheat sheet then you're out of luck, I'm afraid.

bonus #2: "FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, it doesn't need that s at the end!"

yeah, I know, I just enjoy chaos and disarray.

bonus #3 (edit): "what are your disabilities and how exactly are they incurable and/or deadly?"

again, I don't tell the internet everything about me, especially when it poses a risk, especially not as an easily accessible list for you to refer back to whenever you feel inclined to hurt my feelings. that is understandably a sore subject. (edit: that includes physical health issues btw.)

bonus #4 (edit): "so we shouldn't be critical?"

if it wasn't clear from my answer about politics or my post in general, you can have opinions about things, and you can voice that. it's just not realistic to exist at extremes: to think that you alone should dictate what exists in fiction, or to think that people shouldn't be expressing disdain or criticism of any calibur. say how you feel about things, that's fine, but it's also fine if people find that they don't value your input. plus we're all flawed, we can all be hypocritical from time to time, we all get bitchy, and we all make mistakes, or even knowingly fuck things up. that's important to keep in mind, whether we're talking about the one being criticised or the one doing the criticising - poor choices of words, imperfect tone, or contradictory ideas are inevitably going to happen occasionally.

congrats on reaching the end! if you have, at any point, said one of these to me, you owe a hug to your nearest loved one (once it's safe).

edit: might add more links/bonus points in the future when I think of things, but it's late now. (sorry for links where prior notes in the thread have my old url, that may get a tad confusing; also, not all links are my blog or my op, since it is to illustrate points/vibes, not to self-promo.)

[bigskydreaming]

A good description. For my part, I don't like talking about it because of my own experiences. I can, however, see Batman, a story where nearly every memorable villain and even the protagonist himself is a Svengali, could attract a disproportionate number of rape apologists, though fandom is full of them. (Oh, hey, that's the other thing with Jason. Talia.)

Ugh I’m so sorry to hear you can relate, and I totally understand not wanting to talk about it. I have no idea what your particular situation is, obviously, but I also want to reiterate since its been awhile since I’ve mentioned this part.....I don’t feel any like....basically, my choice to talk about this stuff is simply put, MY choice, made for my own reasons, that aren’t a reflection on any other survivor. There are a million and one reasons NOT to come forward, or to struggle with it or not to be open about what happened to us, and none of them are a reflection on any of us, but rather the position it puts us in.

Again, I don’t know your situation or what gender you might be or anything else, and this isn’t at all because your ask made me feel defensive or anything like that. This is just something I’ve wanted to put into words for awhile now seems relevant today, and here’s as good a place as any to put it down:

For myself, being a male survivor....like, there’s never really been any getting around the existence of that kinda, idk, caveat that not many male survivors come forward. Sure, we all see the posts and tweets reminding “remember, men can be raped too!” But that’s not the same thing as men sharing their stories and experiences the way far more women have come forward. And that’s why I ultimately began talking about my own experiences in order to express how I felt about my own positioning in society and how as a survivor I interact and am interacted with by others. Because frankly, there wasn’t anywhere else I could really look to in order to see others talking or sharing about similar things and see myself reflected in what they were saying or the experiences they were describing. So, if I couldn’t find what I felt I needed or could have benefited from, I figured at least I could put it out there in case anyone else who could relate could benefit from mine.

Except, ultimately I’ve come to feel that I honestly don’t believe its that men just flat out don’t come forward with their stories or experiences, its that even when we do, we’re rarely signal boosted - as you can kinda see from the fact that I can post the most inane shit and get it to a thousand notes, but in the five plus years I’ve been making posts about this subject, I’m lucky if I can get a single post on the topic to double digits as far as notes go.

People just flat out are a combination of uncomfortable with the novelty of actual discussions about and around male survivors as well as being not really sure how to talk about it because we’ve never really developed the tools for it.

And to be 100% clear, this has NOTHING to do with female survivors, as a point of comparison or ANYTHING else. It drives me up a fucking WALL when people try and compare and contrast even just how much men being raped is talked about vs women being raped, no matter WHAT their reasons are, because I promise people, I PROMISE - NO survivor, of any gender, has EVER benefitted from being pitted against other survivors to ANY degree. Its not a zero sum game and it doesn’t help male survivors to pull shit like “well at least female survivors are acknowledged” because a) eww, and b) nobody asked anyone to say that on our behalf, and c) hyper-visibility isn’t a privilege (or whatever the best parallel to that might be, I’m not trying to appropriate an anti-blackness specific term so much as its the closest comparison I have at the moment for something that isn’t even a matter of marginalized identities but rather marginalized experiences) and d) its COMPLETELY beside the point and actually misses the point by a WIDE margin.

Because what I’ve come to realize over the years, from my own experiences and talking and sharing with survivors of all genders and demographics and walks of life, is that first off....nobody really needs the reminder that hey, men can be raped too. We see it happen all throughout entertainment and other aspects of society, its not an experience that’s hidden away from the light, its just not ever really CALLED what it is, or followed up on, and talked about.

Like Dick Grayson isn’t a statistical outlier in media. Take Horrible Bosses, a summer blockbuster comedy a few years back with a cast of fairly big name comedians, and whose running B plot throughout the whole movie was Jennifer Aniston’s character wanting to rape her employee, Charlie Day’s character. Not only was this not objectionable to audiences in any sizable way, not only did this never really get called out as wtf by critics and reviews, the movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel with even BIGGER names in its cast, like Christopher Pine, and the continuation of the Aniston’s character trying to rape Charlie Day’s subplot. With zero awareness. And its not like that’s the only movie. There’s plenty more I could name.

Or then you’ve got television, where like, take Riverdale, a well-promoted, well known CW show....whose first few episodes featured the lead character Archie in a sexual relationship with his much older female teacher. Except not really a relationship, because that’s textbook, no debate, literal statutory rape.....that ended with Archie’s character being condemned for it as though he were on equal footing with the teacher, who ultimately left town, and it never really acknowledged that he was literally a victim of statutory rape, that any teacher who does that is not an equal partner but a predator. I stopped watching the show for a lot of reasons by like the fourth episode, but I see enough gifs on tumblr to know that several seasons later, this left little enough impact that some kind of Archie-goes-to-jail plotline has resulted in more memes and jokes about prison rape than I can count, and zero awareness that people are compounding jokes about a character who is literally already an unacknowledged survivor.

That’s one. Or you can take Once Upon A Time, a popular ABC show of multiple seasons, and the running subplot where Robin Hood’s character is raped by the Wicked Witch literally the same way Dick was by Mirage in the comics. She shapeshifts into Maid Marian, who ends up dead, and has ‘sex’ with Robin Hood (no, she rapes him) and ends up pregnant. Not only is this never really called what it is, later on, other characters LITERALLY CHEW HIM OUT for objecting to this baby being left in the care of her mother, aka his rapist, and for ‘not being willing to give her the benefit of the doubt/let her change’ as though him not wanting to co-parent with his rapist is no different from any of the show’s other dubious redemption storylines....except for the fact that this particular part of her redemption arc isn’t ever really one she actually needs redeeming for, because nobody ever fucking points out that she literally raped him and he was her victim. Fast forward to the end of the series, Robin Hood’s been dead for seasons, the Wicked Witch is happily redeemed and has a loving wholesome relationship with her daughter, named after Robin Hood like they were some kind of loving, happy family instead of a rapist, her victim, and the child that was born of it.

Or you can take Grimm, a fairly successful NBC show of multiple seasons WHICH LITERALLY DID THE EXACT SAME THING. The main character Nick was raped in season two by the antagonist of the time, who shape shifted into his wife and had ‘sex’ with him, with him not realizing the truth until later on, by which point she’s pregnant with his child. Fast forward to the end of the show, not only was this never really called what it was, his wife’s character was killed off seasons earlier and he is now, get this, ‘happily’ in a romantic and sexual longterm relationship with his rapist (who he by now knows exactly what she did do and what happened between them and just.....got over it without ever actually like, reacting to it)....and oh yeah, not only are they raising the child born of it together, they’ve had a second child since then.

Anyone ever hear much outcry about the male rapes in these shows? And again, like Horrible Bosses, tip of the iceberg. There’s a LOT more shows I could name, just like there are movies.

Or take comics. Its not even just Dick Grayson that’s a survivor. Or Bruce. Or Jason as you pointed out, which......I know a lot of people ignore both Morrison AND Winick’s take on Talia in order to not write her as the rapist she is in their stories, which I can totally understand as she was a well-established character of color for long before either of them got their hands on her and its perfectly valid for people not to want to have to write her as being tarnished as a rapist because two different writers wrote her that way....without.....either of them ever really acknowledging that was literally how they were writing her. I myself write her as a character of complicated and often dubious morality, but never a rapist, for that reason and many others, but its definitely there. And even in a fandom that has never lacked for acknowledgment of Dick being a survivor whose rapists were women.....a LOT of people still romanticize Jason’s ‘relationship’ with Talia as being something other than a grown woman taking advantage of a minor in an extremely vulnerable and compromised state.....with a TON of other takes out there about the two of them, in posts and fics alike, where its somehow danced around or outright called something other than “that time Talia raped Jason in the comics.”

But its not just the Batbooks. Its like how I’ve mentioned in the past, Garth Ennis wrote into one of his storylines that Kyle Rayner was raped when he went to Gotham one time.....not to make it a plot point, but to use it as a JOKE. Or take Marvel comics, Bobby Drake, one of my other all-time favorite characters....who is also a rape survivor of multiple occasions, without it ever acknowledged as such. Like, he was briefly in a relationship with Mystique, who turned out to have entered the relationship under false pretenses, shocking, and who used having sex with him to depower him and take him out of the upcoming fight between the X-Men and the Marauders, which...we don’t have time to unpack all that right now. But fast forward about a year later, and Bobby has since gotten back together with his ex-girlfriend Opal Tanaka.....who, it turns out, is actually just Mystique in disguise, having sex with him again without it ever being called rape since he was consenting to sex with Opal, not the woman who slept with him that one time just to make sure he was helpless to stop a whole lot of people from getting killed. But hey, forget about Mystique! How about that time Chuck Austen wrote him ‘having sex’ with an empath who was EXPLICITLY noted in the narrative as using her powers to manipulate his emotions to even WANT to have sex with her in the first place, and when an issue later it comes out she’s married and her husband starts beating up Bobby for ‘sleeping with his wife’ all the other characters present, all of them friends and teammates of his, condemn Bobby for this without it ever being acknowledged that he was literally manipulated into it by a superpower and he was the victim.

Again. Tip. Of. The. Iceberg.

But you see what I mean? Male rape isn’t an outlier and it isn’t an unknown....its everywhere! Its just.....never called that, really, and never really talked about, even by people who normally would, except for the fact that I don’t think we as a society have ever really forced ourselves to FIND a way to talk about it, because of the fact that like.....the very notion of it threatens and undermines the essence of the patriarchal beliefs that are hammered into us all from day one. Even when we know the patriarchy is crap, we still have so much ingrained in us from early childhood that stuff like this, which is a blatant symptom of it even if not one aimed primarily at disadvantaging women.....like, it slips under the radar because its never fully called out or spotlighted in loud enough or widely enough ways to keep us from overlooking how much its impacted our POVs.

Blatantly put, the patriarchy and sexism RELIES on the idea that men are somehow more powerful/stronger/whatthefuckever than women. And male victims - of abuse as well as rape, though definitely rape.....like, even just a widespread awareness of our existence is enough to kinda destabilize that belief that is so foundational to the patriarchy its DEPENDENT on it being upheld as unassailable truth.

Because if forced to acknowledge that men are just as vulnerable to even something like rape as anyone else in the ‘right’ situations or dynamics, it forces confrontation with the reality that no matter what the patriarchy has claimed for as long as its existed.....men aren’t inherently any more powerful, or stronger, or resistant to harm/humiliation/VICTIMIZATION as anyone else.

And the patriarchy flat out can’t afford that confrontation, so it can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors.

Again, just want to be beyond clear - nowhere here am I okay with making this about a compare and contrast between the experiences and interactions society has with male survivors and around male rape, and the same with female survivors and rape. Because I mean, we all should be more than aware that society as a whole sucks at the acknowledgment, addressing and handling of rape in any context, in any of the ways it comes up as a topic, in terms of any survivor who comes forward no matter who or when or how.....like. We suck at this topic, and at any and all discussions about this topic. Period. Flat out. So when I say the patriarchy can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors, I am in no way aiming to diminish the reality that it does just as fucking an abyssmal job at acknowledging and responding to female survivors....the point here is not the poor reception any and all survivors receive to disclosing their experiences in our society, but rather the specific why of this when it comes to male survivors just as the particular subject of focus here.

And again, like, my only credentials here are just like. My life experiences, lol. I’m not trying to claim anything more or other than that, make no mistake. I’m a literal college drop out, this is not the result of comprehensive studies or vetted by the scientific method. This is literally just “like, my opinion, man” and makes no pretenses at being other than that. Its just the conclusions I’ve formed over the years and why, completely anecdotal and not aiming to be any kind of authoritative or expert viewpoint with my personal take here. Largely because I haven’t really found anywhere that I feel the conversation has proceeded enough in earnest that its even at a point that would ALLOW for that yet. So this is all more just.....my feel of things, and why, as just kinda idk, hopefully a starting point for further ACTUAL exploration of all this. My attempts at starting the kind of conversation I feel we need to be having in order to be at all productive instead of just constantly spinning around in circles, which is what it so often feels like.

So when I say I think the patriarchy can’t honestly AFFORD to acknowledge male survivors specifically, I’m not positing some grand conspiracy or active cover-up.

Because nothing like that is even necessary.

Its built into the framework of the system itself. Its not that I believe anyone goes out of their way to “hide” male survivors from anyone, I’m saying there’s no need. Because its been so ingrained into us from such a young age and in so many ways, most of us never even think to question whether anything is even being hidden, or if its just as simple as, well men don’t really come forward, because their pride and self-esteem is so impacted by what happened to them, due to the expectations heaped on men by the patriarchy.

Its kinda stunning, actually. Even while ACKNOWLEDGING that the patriarchy does impact male survivors in ways as well, we’re kinda....led away from the ACTUAL ways and ACTUAL reasons why....because despite literally calling the patriarchy out as the bad guy in this way, it still manages to weasel itself out of this confrontation by virtue of the fact that you can’t ever really effectively address a problem when you’re being misdirected to a tangent that’s not really the REAL problem that needs addressing.

So personally, I’m of the belief that its not that men just don’t ever really come forward. Its that even when some do, like myself, we can scream our heads off for years and it just echoes into the void, because its not being heard in the ways we need to be heard in order to effectively....signalboost our stories and experiences and needs. Much like I just mentioned above, its misdirection......everybody’s too focused on addressing an issue that doesn’t actually NEED solving (ie, reminding everyone/promoting awareness that men too, CAN be raped), and thus at least feeling productive, feeling like they’re contributing to tackling the problem.....that meanwhile, the ACTUAL problem (men CAN be raped too, and are, and here are men talking about it only for the signal to get lost and fizzle out rather than get boosted)....it flies right under the radar.

Because in line with what I said earlier about how it does no good to compare our experiences, both in terms of assault and our lives in the aftermath, with women survivors - its because its apples and oranges.

Rape isn’t a gendered issue, because it can happen to anyone of any gender, at any time....its situational. Dependent on context. Rape culture, however, IS a gendered issue.

Because rape culture, how our society INTERACTS with the very idea of abuse and rape and its victims and perpetrators....spills out entirely from that core foundation of the patriarchy and sexism, and thus much like those things themselves, how it affects women survivors is always going to be totally different from how it affects men who are survivors. Our experiences are not interchangeable - that has nothing to do with being better or worse, more publicized or less, etc, etc. They just....manifest different ways. The cause of our trauma-related problems might be the same thing, but the problems it creates for us are not, and none of us can ever really benefit from it being treated as a one size fits all kinda deal, nor is it to our benefit to treat it like there’s only so much conversation about the topic available to go around.

What I mean here is, like I said, the patriarchy at the foundation of our society can’t afford for it to be widely acknowledged that men can be victimized too.

But it can’t actually stop this from happening, given that its basis for saying it never happens is an inherent uneven-ness that only exists because it made it exist, not because like....we’re innately born uneven.

So....it had to come up with a narrative, a response, for when men DID step forward and say hey, I too was abused. I was raped. Etc.

And it did.

As a result, a lot of women don’t come forward because they fear not being believed, with reason. And this is true for a lot of men as well, just as the following is true for a lot of women too....

Which is that IMO the bigger reason/more immediate reason a lot of men don’t come forward, is that our concern isn’t so much that we won’t be believed....

Its that we will be believed, but rather than this getting us the help we need or the justice we ask for, it only ever really creates more problems for us, due to the patriarchy’s go-to fix-it job for this situation:

Paint the male victim as being not so much a victim as a victimizer-in-training.

See, the lie that men are innately more powerful, stronger, more ‘deserving’ of being in charge can’t afford the admittance than men are also vulnerable, can be victimized, taken advantage of.....

But it CAN afford the idea that men can be abused/raped/etc with this going on to eventually result in us becoming abusers/rapists/victimizers ourselves in the future, as long as THIS is kept the clear focus and emphasis of the narrative.

Because after all, there’s nothing in the idea that we all inevitably take out our pain (whatever it may come from) on others that contradicts the idea that we’re stronger, more powerful, etc.

And its not like the patriarchy and its supporters give a shit if this throws even other men under the bus, because the only thing institutions and systems of power actually care about is POWER.

They’re not our friend, even if in a different life, we could have ended up wielding more of that power than we do in this one. Even if we do in other aspects of our lives gain social and other forms of power more easily/with less obstacles than other people.

They only care what we can do for them, to spread that power, perpetuate it, preserve it....so just like white supremacy will happily screw over poor white people and America doesn’t give a shit about its prison population and the LGBTQ+ community so often ignores the issues of its members of color and so on.....the patriarchy is more than willing to make male survivors from any and all groups and communities take the hit it has no intention of taking by letting it be confirmed its built on sand and bullshit.

So just as much as we’re ingrained from early childhood with the idea that men can’t be victimized the way others can, the linked lesson we’re taught is that men who have been hurt badly or in certain ways will almost certainly end up hurting others.....

With the implicit acknowledgment that there was just an admittance that we can be hurt badly/in certain ways ending up just swiftly glossed over. As the focus is instead kept on the harm done to our hypothetical future victims.

Because the easiest way to keep someone from being sympathetic, is to give people someone else to sympathize with MORE. To give people reason to feel a person doesn’t even deserve your sympathy in the first place.

And so now think about not how often we see men victimized by abuse and rape in media, or how often we see men portrayed as survivors and yes, victims of these things.....

Think instead of how often in media we see men who victimize others, who are the antagonists, the villains, the serial killer/rapist/abuser of the week.......and with it offhandedly being dropped into a scene and then never really focused on again, that these men were almost always said to have been abused or raped or victimized in the past....and this is the REASON for why they all ended up doing what they did.

Suddenly, the numbers go up, don’t they? The second you think about it from THAT angle?

Its just....the reason that angle literally exists to the extent it does in society and the messages we’re fed, the entertainment we’re given.....is because that’s the POINT.

Because its natural for us not to think of any of those men as victims when by the time we find that part out, we’ve already internalized our view of them as victimizers, and solidly put our sympathies with their victims in the present. Because what was done to them in the past doesn’t excuse what they do to others in the present. Being hurt doesn’t give you carte blanche to hurt others. We all know this. Hence....WHY IT WORKS.

Except, this isn’t actually a reflection of reality. The myth of the perpetual cycle of abuse is just that, a myth. Oh, it happens, certainly. With men, with women, quite probably more often with men than women, not much doubt about that....

But its not that it happens, we’re told. That’s not the issue here.

Its that we’re pretty much told it ALWAYS happens. Its always GOING to happen. That there’s no real point in sympathizing with a male victim who is most likely going to end up victimizing someone else in the future and thus he’s not really gonna deserve your sympathy at that point, will he? Which makes him not really worth wasting it on him in the first place. Makes it easy to come up with something to focus on more instead of his story or experiences, something just as deserving of your focus or sympathy, but that you’re less likely to end up regretting in the future like you would if a male survivor you sympathized with now ends up in the news five years down the line for having hurt someone else.

Because over centuries and generations the idea of male survivors at all has been cultivated into having this almost mythic quality, there’s just enough subtle feeling of wrongness around the very idea of it, like, that it just doesn’t quite make sense...that it ends up being almost a relief to give our minds a reason, an explanation for why they don’t have to come up with a way to adjust the paradigm there, to make room for that idea, realign a worldview into one where there’s a specific spot for male survivors much like any other subject that needs focusing on or evaluating for whatever reason.

And this point, this conclusion that no matter how tragic what happened to make a male survivor was, it will only ever ultimately end up in the same spot, with him later on passing along the harm, a warped kind of paying it forward....this is hammered home over and over. We see it everywhere, without even often realizing what it is we’re seeing and internalizing, like with the examples I cited of all the times men are raped in entertainment without it being called that. Its the flip side of that....the times that men are raped in entertainment with it being called that, but swiftly moved past that to introduce the reason not to care that that’s what it was we just saw.

And thus throughout several seasons of Law & Order: SVU we’ve had male survivors, usually teens, who at first seemed eminently sympathetic for what had been done to them.....but who by the end of the episodes, ended up becoming school shooters exacting revenge on their bullies. Or ended up killing the coach who raped them in high school and then went on to rape a dozen others. Or in the last scene of the episode is found kneeling over their abusive father’s corpse with blood on their hands and the detectives standing over them in sadness that now they had to take the boy they thought was the victim away to jail as the victimizer he didn’t have to end up becoming.

Except.....he only becomes that because they make the choice to write him becoming it! Every single time!

Like in 13 Reasons Why, where another male survivor ends up....another school shooter. Or in Criminal Minds, where pretty much every single killer throughout the series ended up with a backstory of abuse and rape and victimization as a child, making it ‘all the more tragic’ and with the protagonists often literally using the phrase “almost like the guy never had a chance.”

Well no, they didn’t. Not when it was written to BE that way.

And then we see the idea root and take hold in audiences. And spread and perpetuated. Validated.

Its why I hate the woobification thing in fandoms, where fans of (white) villain characters fill in their backstory for themselves with all the REASONS they are the way they are, and with the reasons never being that they’re just a sadistic entitled asshole, but because they were hurt. They were abused as a child, they were raped offscreen, the heroes said mean things about them in the burn book once and that’s why they just had to kill the hero’s whole family, see.

And everything comes full circle.....not only is it that all male victims are destined to end up victimizers....its equally true that all male victimizers must have once been male victims. Even if we didn’t see it onscreen or on the page.

Except, and why I loathe that fandom tendency.....

THAT NARRATIVE IS NOT AN INEVITABILITY AND NEVER WAS! The end point and point of origin presented there are NOT innately set in stone!

And all that does is just validate and accept as truth the LIE that patriarchal society puts forth in order to play smoke and mirrors with this one specific facet of human experiences that innately possesses the potential to destabilize the lie at the very rock bottom foundation of everything the patriarchy’s ever built at everyone else’s expense. The reason it offers up for why its not only allowable, its for the best that we look elsewhere from any male victims that actually step forward and say hey, can you all listen to me for a second, I want to tell you what happened to me.

And the fun irony of THIS aspect of things is if you think this woobification fandom thing benefits male survivors as a whole in some way or another, like the tendency of fans to find even villainous victimizers sympathetic means that they can and do sympathize just as much with actual male victims.....I’m fairly certain it doesn’t.

See, because with villains in fandom......this retroactive sympathy for imagined past traumas happens to only the characters that fandom has already decided they liked DESPITE the awful things they’ve done. Its made up to be used as an excuse instead of an explanation....

And like we all know damn well, even if we don’t always admit it or like to acknowledge it....

Explanations are not actually excuses. The harm you do can not be wiped away by the harm done to you.

So, because that’s still inside of us, our awareness of that, even if its ignored on the surface while defending hot white villains or whatever.....it doesn’t actually give anyone reason to ignore the narrative our society constructs around actual male survivors who it encourages people to condemn or ignore on the basis of purely hypothetical FUTURE abuses or wrongdoings.

And after all, you can’t actually decide you can look past the harms a person enacts and still view them as sympathetic if....you don’t actually know yet what those harms are going to end up being and thus whether you can make your peace with them, can you?

You just know that harms WILL be done, so....might as well err on the side of caution and assume they won’t be forgivable when deciding here and now to be thrifty with sympathies and spread any actionable effort taken on behalf of survivors in areas where those sympathies are more likely to be put to better use.

And yeah, all of this plays into why I focus so much on certain aspects of Dick’s narratives, and they usually AREN’T the rapes themselves.

Because for me, for many other male survivors I know......

Acknowledging those happened, examining how he felt when those happened....its not the biggest issue. Just like in our own lives, having it acknowledged or known what was done to us, having to face how it made us feel....that’s not really our primary concern.

Its what happens AFTER that.

How people view us and treat us AFTER their initial sympathies, whatever they are, dry up - which, we’re given reason to believe, they always inevitably will.

Because it isn’t all that different from what I frequently complain of happening with Dick in fandom, and hell, its WHY it bothers me so much, because its literally been a recurrent theme throughout my life:

The most widely acknowledged male survivor in comics, just also happens to coincidentally be....

The character most often spun as having a wicked temper, being almost irrationally angry at times, with his temper being likened to things like an eruption, an earthquake, a NATURAL DISASTER....something to be avoided at all costs, something the other characters fear, with good reason, but also impossible to avoid, because its too intrinsic to his nature. Its an inevitability. Dick Grayson WILL erupt or explode again at some point, and its going to be ugly. Like he’s a time bomb.

Even though....as I frequently go in depth on.....Dick’s never actually been shown as having particularly poor self-control either on just its own merits or specifically in comparison to others. He doesn’t really actually HAVE a track record of taking out his own hurts on others. On giving people REASON to be afraid of his temper even while they continue to take no responsibility for giving him reasons to be angry at all.

Its why I so often emphasize the discrepancy between the fact that whatever someone’s own personal character preferences, the FACT remains that Dick Grayson is the character in this family that most often bears the BRUNT of everyone ELSE’S anger.......just as the fact equally remains that Dick Grayson is still ultimately the character most often singled out in posts and headcanons and fanfics as unleashing his temper on others in unjustifable ways and usually without actual provocation.

None of this is a coincidence to me.

Its how we see over and over again that its okay for Dick Grayson to be angry FOR others, ON others’ behalf....its just when he’s angry FOR HIMSELF, for being taken advantage of, ignored, walked all over or mistreated....that’s when his anger is unjustified. Irrational.

Dangerous.

Or you guys know that one fanon about how Dick forces his hugs on his siblings, and his displays of physical affection are often unwanted, and thus violations?

Yeah, that one hits me right in the Issues too, because again, that’s not remotely supported by anything in canon....there has NEVER been an instance of Dick’s family asking him to cut it our or feeling like......IMPOSED upon because he likes to hug his family.

Its not to say people can’t feel that way about even well-meaning displays of physical affection that aren’t cleared with them first....

Its that this is something that people had to DECIDE to make a thing with Dick and his family. To actually craft the narrative that the many-times victim of unwanted touching was effectively violating his family’s wishes and boundaries every time he hugs them without being asked or invited to.

With that number being however many times a writer wants to write him doing when highlighting it as a violation.

And is this a thing we really see with any other character? Is my question there. How often do you see literally any other character being chewed out or resented for....hugging?

Just the one character most known for giving physical affection freely with his FAMILY and close friends.....

Who just so happens to also be the one character most often the guy who has his bodily autonomy violated.

The canon rape survivor has literally had HUGS weaponzed against him.

With the end result being.....every time he does it, every time this pings on a reader’s radar as Bad and Unwelcome....the linked takeaway is its one more reason for that reader to then ask themselves....well if he doesn’t care whether other people want him touching them, why should I care when he doesn’t want people touching him either?

Which ultimately just winds up another form of: why should I feel bad if bad things happened to someone who isn’t really that great of a person?

See what I mean?

Its all connected. Its not me getting frustrated with a bunch of different random things, its all the same thing at the end of the day, all so often traceable back to the same places.

I couldn’t untangle myself from so much of this and how it impacts me and my view of things even if I wanted to, to such an extent that in the end, want really has very little to do with it.

(And uh, you think those bug the shit out of me, let me tell you about just the very SIGHT of all those fics where Dick the widely acknowledged, perhaps best known male rape victim in comics.....is a rapist himself. Because yeah....even if people like to keep their incest light and fluffy or sweet instead of predatory, to someone who is y’know, personally familiar with all of this, Dick and ANY of his younger brothers is never going to appear as anything BUT predatory. As yet one more time where the linear journey of a male survivor all the way to the final evolution into male predator is born out and treated as so matter-of-fact, so inevitable, it hardly warrants noting as anything especially obscene or gross to write about a character famous for his survivor status. And its not like Dick is actually the only character in the franchise I like, so its not like its any better when its Jason painted as the aggressor in a fic, for instance....and while I will always be hugely critical of how Bruce is written as abusive in canon, that’s a wildly different thing from sexually preying on his sons so again, seeing him as his own sons’ rapists is yet again more upsetting than most people would think without connecting Bruce’s own status as a canon rape survivor, whether we like that story or not.....and plugging it into again, this pre-programmed route traveling from survivor to predator, over and over again. Victim to victimizer. Like clockwork.)

Anyway, my point is not to harp on this but rather to just lay it out there in this way. And how it plays into so much of my own personal approach to dealing with all of this when it comes up.......because the simple fact is I have to, there is no opt-out lol, and it comes up a lot, in large part because its so easy t reframe as being something else that most people who don’t have direct experience being directly impacted by all of this in its various myriad expressions are understandably not going to see it pinging on their radar and getting logged into their awareness the way it always does in mine.

*Shrugs* It is what it is. Its there. Avoiding it has never done me any favors, so.......as I so often demonstrate in a variety of degrees of Hmm Probably Coulda Done That Better, lol, I try and deal with things head-on and adjust as needed.

Easier said than done, not always pulled off, never any guarantee that I’m going about things the right way, just that like.....

There’s problems that need addressing that stem from all of this, and I know where mine lie and put a lot, a LOT of effort into addressing them and keeping an eye on them and not letting them get the better of me.

But the flipside of paying that close attention and that much means I’m also keenly aware of when and where I couldn’t take responsibility even if I wanted to, because the responsibility literally just isn’t mine to take....because yeah, I live in a society but guess what, so does everyone else, and its the same damn society, so  at the end of the day, no matter HOW well or not I go about handling the matter of my rapes and their overall impact and shaping of my life.....that’s just me handling the rape part of things.

The rape culture? And how THAT affects and informs every survivor’s life in whatever way it does going forward?

That’s kinda.....only ever going to be improved upon or not, on like....a cultural scale. That’s a society thing. Not a survivor thing.

Because we are all shaped by our cultures, every aspect of our cultures, and this one is unfortunately no different. But, its shaped by us too.

But to actually shape it INTO something, or more accurately, to shape it into LESS of what it is, blunt some of its edges, lessen some of its ability to do harm to survivors, to compound the harm already done.....

Something like THAT requires intent. Conscious effort.

And intent requires like....first being able to SEE what problems need addressing.

And that’s kiiiiinda the whole point of survivors coming forward when so rarely, so MINUTELY does it EVER result in actionable justice for that individual survivor.

And I don’t for a second believe a single one ever believes or assumes otherwise.

Cuz its super not fun. It never like......I don’t fucking know how it looks to other people, tbh, because I’ve literally been a survivor since before I even really knew that I was being abused or molested, that there was something I was surviving....but trust me, I’ve thought about it, I’ve wondered, and I don’t know if like, people think a survivor ‘telling their story’ is somehow an equivalent of like, getting a book deal or something, there’s the attention it brings after all, and isn’t there that saying that no publicity is bad publicity.....

LOL. Yeah. Umm. Just saying, if you don’t have personal experience as a survivor having come forward or shared openly about your experiences, let me refer you to another saying as counterpoint: Don’t believe everything you hear.

Cuz that’s definitely not one anyone else ever forgets when ‘listening’ to any of us.

Anyway, wrapping this up by bringing it back to like.....my extremely evident mood and irration of this past week.....this is ALL connected, this is ALL part and parcel of every single time this comes up as an issue for me and its never less of one at one time than it is at another, its never a little easier this time because this reason or that....its always the same damn frustration every single time. Stuff like this doesn’t get doled out in manageable portions, its all or nothing. Its either a problem right this current second or its not, and if its not, that’s only until the next time its a problem again, likely sooner rather than later.

And that’s the part that makes me talk about this as much as I do, and get as frustrated as I do when people just do not seem to get.....

I don’t have an off switch on this matter because there IS no off switch for me. The times I get frustrated and vent about this stuff are actually only at MOST a TENTH of how often it rears its head for me to deal with.....the times my reactions or responses boil over into public view, into something you guys see, or ‘have to deal with’ are literally just the times where there is no keeping a lid on it because the pot was already full to start with.

And so it really. Epically. Beyoooooond doesn’t help matters, when despite being the only male survivor I’m aware of being consistently vocal on the matter in the only fandom I know of where a prominant male character is almost universally acknowledged as a survivor....

I usually only ever hear the response:

“Mmmmmm, I’m not really sure what makes you think there’s a problem here and that it has anything to do with us, when see, I don’t agree, and I don’t really see why you think your opinion on the matter of how this particular character is written about and viewed and depicted interacting with others and how fandom interacts with him, is like.....of any kind of real relevance? This is just like....your opinion, man.”

Me: ........have I ever claimed for a second it wasn’t? Didn’t I use those exact words at least once in all of this already?

fahsklhfaklhflakfhalffha

Cuz for the record, ultimately, that’s what this all boils down to. I’ve wanted to post about this stuff for awhile now, but make no mistake:

It literally is all just my opinion? Formed of my own personal experiences and the conclusions I’ve taken away from them. Laid out as fully and extensively as I can manage, specifically SO people can take all of that into context when deciding for themselves how much weight or not to GIVE my opinion......

In which case, y’know, the experiences I have with this matter and how they correlate to these opinions, like, have contextual relevance and seem necessary to include.

Its NOT because I’m trying to use them to browbeat everyone into agreeing with me because I think I’m the only one whose opinion matters here, lol.

No. Just that like....it DOES matter? And its kinda exhausting when people act like all of this is arbitrary and abstract to me, that its some kind of superiority complex or me moralizing from a pulpit or some shit when I’m literally saying none of it is abstract or arbitrary to me, and the louder I say that, the more people THEN say “oh so basically your opinion is the only one that matters here unless we disclose the same kind of experiences or background huh?”

*headdesk*

I just.....it seems my stance is either born of self-righteousness and nothing personal whatsoever....unless I make enough of a fuss about how that’s NOT true, in which case my stance is that apparently I think I’m the only one who is allowed to have an opinion here because I’ve made such a point about it being personal.

But its definitely not that people are just determined to invalidate anything I have to say on this subject one way or another, right?

Anyway.

So all of that’s like...whatever that was. Make of it what you guys will, but I do hope that at least for some people whom it might be a new perspective or new information to, you’ll consider asking why is it that in a fandom that prominently features a canon male survivor whose survivorhood is so frequently denoted as a key and critical part of his character....someone like me, who is frequently cited as a resource on many, many other kinds of meta about Dick Grayson......seems to have more people interested in discouraging me from ever expounding on my own experiences in this matter and any correlations I see between those and Dick’s experiences and narratives, than there are people interested in like......utilizing me as the freaking resource on male survivor experiences and viewpoints that I’ve literally been out here offering to be from day one....specifically BECAUSE of how rarely men are viewed as coming forward and being open about our shit here.

*Shrugs*

Just food for thought.

[yourmandevine]

Some stuff that made me happy in 2020, in no particular order

God send you no greater loss. It’s something my grandmother said a lot — a bit of highly Irish Catholic wisdom intended to remind you, warmly but sharply, that whatever you’re currently suffering through isn’t all that bad compared to what lots of other people are dealing with. That it probably isn’t too much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. That you should, instead, be grateful for what you’ve got, big and small and everything in between.

God sent a great many people a great many unfathomable losses this year, and as hard as it felt at times, our family wasn’t among them; we’re lucky, in the big picture. In the past, people have recommended I try writing those reasons down, to give myself a list of stuff to be thankful for, for the times it’s tough to summon up the gratitude. I figured the end of the year was as good a time as any to make that list, to highlight the stuff that helped me get through this year — the reasons big, small, and in between.

So: here goes.

Peanut butter and jelly

I haven’t counted how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve eaten since March 11, which is good, because that would be an absurd thing to do, and a sure sign that I have succumbed to a very specific kind of madness. It’s also good, though, because I would undoubtedly be ashamed by the number; the figure would be titanic, like the unsinkable ship of same name, or the iceberg that sunk it.

Or, at least, I would be ashamed under normal circumstances. This fuckin’ year required whatever flotation device you could find, and you know what I found in the fridge and cupboard? A couple of slices of bread, some strawberry jam, and some goddamn Skippy.

Need a weird mid-morning “brunch” after not having breakfast because you went right from waking up to remote school with the 6-year-old? Crank up a PB&J with that third cup of coffee. Need to pack something in the diaper bag to feed everyone while you’re out at the playground for the afternoon? Stack ‘em up, son. Need a late snack after working the overnight shift filing weird bubble playoff columns? Three letters, one ampersand, one love.

I need to eat better in 2021. But I kind of needed to eat sort of like shit to get through 2020, and time and again, when your man needed it most, PB&J was there.

Sunday night Zoom sessions with college friends

I know that most of us started something like this back in March; I’m not sure how many have stuck with it. I hope the answer is “a lot,” because honestly, knowing that I’m going to end the week by seeing a few friends — some here in Brooklyn but mostly beyond our reach for safety’s sake, some who’ve moved away — has felt like a stabilizing agent on more than a few occasions. It’s important, and no small blessing, to have people in your life who really know you, weird messy ugly bits and all, and in front of whom you can let everything go.

That gallery view’s provided a place to vent, to seethe, to laugh, to cry, and to try to find some semblance of center before heading back into another week. I’m grateful for it, and for the people in those little boxes. Except for the time they reminded me that, when I was 18, I was pretty sure I was a Pacey, and they were all extremely confident I was a Dawson. They were right, but still: a bitter pill to swallow, then and now.

Olivia calling herself “Dr. Bloody”

She took out her little toy doctor kit and just turned into a cackling villain.

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Deeply disconcerting, yes, but also adorable.

All Fantasy Everything

What got me in the door was the conceit: three very funny stand-up comedians (Ian Karmel, David Gborie, Sean Jordan), often with a very funny guest but sometimes without, pick some topic or another and engage in a fantasy draft of their favorite aspects or representations of that topic. (It is, crucially, a serpentine draft. Now what is that? That’s a great question.) Some favorite examples: Mikes; Words That You Think Make You Sound Smart, vols. 1 and 2; Things You Yell After You Dunk on Someone; Fictional Athletes; Crimes We’d Like to Commit. Yeah. It’s that kind of podcast.

What kept me around was the friendship. Listen to an episode and it becomes really clear really quickly just how much the three hosts love each other, how much fun they have being around each other and making one another laugh. The warmth radiates, just pours out of the speakers; in a year where I sorely needed some good vibes, I appreciated my regular check-ins with the Good Vibes Gang to just ... unclench for an hour and a half or so. 

Drinking beer

OK, I’ll admit: This doesn’t sound great for me. It’s true, though. I really like beer. (We brewed one in our kitchen, which I realize is something of a “bearded guy in Brooklyn” cliche, but here we are. It was exciting to complete a project, and it tasted OK-ish.) At some points this year, it didn’t feel like there wasn’t much to look forward to, and sometimes drinking some High Lifes or Narragansett tall boys — with my wife in our living room, with friends on the computer, whatever — helped take the edge off a shitty day/week/month/year. I look forward to being able to do that outside with people again.

The Good Place

I am sure some very smart cultural critics and political thinkers and social revolutionaries have forwarded compelling arguments for why this show is Bad, Actually, because that seems to be more or less true about most things, whether because said thing is Actually Bad or because the economics of the attention economy on the internet functionally necessitate the composition and publication of pretty much every position on pretty much every issue, and especially ones that present a counterargument for why you shouldn’t like the thing you like, and might be kind of a piece of shit for liking it. But I liked this half-hour comedy about the way the universe might be put together, why we should try to take better care of each other, and how doing so might be a pretty great way to take better care of ourselves.

Andrew let me write about it a little bit for a big project we did before the series finale aired, which was really nice of him. I found myself thinking about this part a lot this year:

I also thought a lot about Peeps Chili, but that happens every year.

Taking pictures of my dog

Check out this flumpy goddamn champion:

“Lugar is a good boy” is the main takeaway here. They don’t all have to be complicated.

Schitt’s Creek

I know we’re not alone in this, but we inhaled this show this year. A half-hour comedy about people being laid low, learning how to deal with who they actually are, and finding some grace and community and opportunities for growth kind of hit the spot, I guess.

One of the most wholesale enjoyable ensemble comedy casts I can remember; Catherine O’Hara was already in Cooperstown, but what she made with Moira Rose only polishes her plaque. I’ll never be able to describe with any specificity the thing Chris Elliott does, but I know it has made me laugh since I was a child too young to understand the Letterman bits or see Cabin Boy in the theater, and it’s probably going to make me laugh until I am dead.

I love that people who, for years, never got to see themselves or people like them on screen got to see David Rose on screen and maybe recognize themselves a little bit. The idea that seeing the David/Patrick relationship might make them maybe feel a little more at home, a little safer and more whole, makes me happy. Sad, about the before, but happy, about the now and the what comes next.

Past that, I just love how what was ostensibly a family-and-friends production for a Canadian channel just got absolutely everything right—the tone, the look, the sound, the theme song, the cast, the jokes, my goodness, the jokes—and before long, the rest of the world just got it. Like catching a fastball square on the barrel. Something the show clearly knew a little bit about.

Finding new outdoor places it was safe to go

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need to give the kids a place to be that wasn’t unnecessarily dangerous but also wasn’t inside our two-bedroom apartment led us to do more exploring than we had before. Shirley Chisholm State Park is great. Canarsie Pier was a fun place to spend a Sunday morning; so’s Canarsie Playground. If we got there early enough or made our peace with some rain, the beaches at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden were pretty rad this summer. I lived in Staten Island from ages 8 through 18, and during breaks throughout college, and don’t think I ever hiked in High Rock Park — that’s dumb, because it was nice!

Even if all those little excursions did was kill a little time and reduce the overall stress level of the four humans stuck in our four walls, that’s not nothing. Some days this year, it was everything.

Cobra Kai

I know I’m late here; I didn’t rush to seek it out because I don’t consider myself a huge fan of The Karate Kid, or at least not a big enough fan to sign up for YouTube’s premium service. I checked it out when it came to Netflix, though, and I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this show. Give me “dumb, but with heart” every day of the week.

I believe in Miguel Diaz; I believe in Johnny Lawrence; I believe I will be firing up Season 3 next month, and perhaps drinking some Coors Banquets in its honor. (I cannot, however, believe how the “get him a body bag” thing came back around, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Closing unread tabs

I’m a serial hoarder of links, and I am bad at finishing all of them. I’ve tried to get into Pocket and Instapaper, but I’ve never been able to turn that sort of workflow — open link, save to third-party service, go back to third-party service later to read, then delete from there — into something that felt instinctual, natural, or habitual. So: lots of tabs. Like, lots of tabs.

This was a dicier proposition than usual in 2020, because cutting my work week in half to be able to more effectively coparent two kids who didn’t have school or day care for most of the year meant less time to read things.

I tried to do my best to keep up with the important stuff for work, and to read at least some stuff about how other parents were dealing with their anxiety/anger/depression/frustration at having to be on 24/7 and work, and to stay abreast of (at least some of) what was happening in the world. Sometimes, though, I would wake up and realize I’d been holding onto blog posts about Really Interesting Rotation Decisions on the 11th-Seeded Team in the East or whatever for literally nine months, and I would go against my nature and just hit the eject button on a 25-deep window, and something amazing would happen: I wouldn’t get fired for being shitty at my job. I would move on with my day, and I would feel about 10 pounds lighter.

I still keep too much stuff open. (As we speak, I’ve got three different Chrome windows open on two different laptops. I choose not to count the total tabs.) But I do so knowing that, if it gets too heavy, I can experience the momentary joy of surrendering to the inevitability that I can’t catch everything. In that moment, I feel OK with my decay.

Reading writers I wasn’t familiar with before

Two in particular stand out in my mind: Nekias Duncan, now of BasketballNews.com, who does excellent film breakdowns and statistical analysis, and Katie Heindl, who writes basketball stuff of all types all over the place, and strings sentences together in a way that scratches an itch inside my brain. I’m grateful I got more chances to read them this year, I look forward to bigger and better things for both of them, and I’m hopeful that, if things calm down and our schedules go back to something approximating normalcy, I’ll have more bandwidth to hunt out more new voices in the year ahead.

The time I ambushed my wife as she was trying to break down and put away the girls’ space tent

Pretty good.

Siobhan learning to ride a bicycle (with training wheels, but still)

The moment passed pretty quickly; Not Exactly A Mechanic over here can’t get the training wheels to reliably work right without either loosening them too much or tightening them so much that she can’t pedal it. In that first moment, though, and for as long as it lasted, it was really great to see her get excited about doing something new, big kid shit, for the first time.

She was proud. I was proud of her. And then we went to a playground for a few hours. Pretty good day.

Tyler Tynes roasting me

Tyler did some incredible work this year — The Cam Chronicles is getting deserved praise as one of 2020′s best podcasts, and his reporting on the Movement for Black Lives was exemplary. It’s hard to top this, though:

You know what the messed up part is? I was excited to tell him what I was doing, just because I knew the reaction would be so violent. Like a body rejecting a transplant. So lucky to have such a dear, dear friend.

PUP

I’m late on everything, so I didn’t start listening to PUP until the spring of 2019, but I haven’t really stopped since. This year has been too sedentary too often; this band is too kinetic to allow me to stay there.

“Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley Kate” is never more than about 20 minutes away from returning to the front of my mind. I would fucking love for it to be safe enough to watch these guys live at some point, and I am absolutely going to take Steve up on his offer.

Someone sending me a shirt based on a joke I tweeted

First:

Then:

Then:

I’m not sure you should be rewarding my behavior, SnoCoPrintShop, but I appreciate it all the same.

Which reminds me:

Family dinner/family movie night

My wife works in Manhattan and commutes back on the train, and we've tried to prioritize getting the girls to bed early since they were little, so that doesn’t leave much of a window between when she gets home and they go in the tub for us all to connect; before everything shut down, we almost never really ate together. We’re still not great about it, but for a while now we’ve carved out Saturday as family dinner night, where we sit down to eat and talk about our “up” from the day — something that happened that made us feel good or happy, or something we’re looking forward to. (We used to talk about our “down,” too, but that kind of seemed like overkill. Why try to focus on more bad shit right now, you know?)

Then we settle in for a movie, with who gets to pick rotating each week. It’s mostly been Pixar, which has been great but also has its drawbacks; after she caught me crying during one of them (maybe the Bing-Bong scene in Inside Out? or Miguel singing to Grandma Coco?), Siobhan straight up told me, “You need to get yourself together, man.” We just watched My Neighbor Totoro, too, which they loved, so we’re probably going to try some more Miyazaki soon. It’s a really simple thing, but it’s one we rarely made time for before, and it’s been really nice to manufacture something positive that we can share and look forward to together.

Sometimes looking like a shiftless drifter

No shade to anyone who felt strongly about getting a lineup or whatever, but I haven’t really felt like going to the barbershop was worth the risk, and I continue to refuse to believe that my wife can actually pull off the fade she’s long wanted to give me. (It is also possible that she just means she’s intending to run my fade, and that I will before long wind up cold-cocked and slumped by my bride of nine years.) So I’ve just kind of been growing out my hair like it was when I was single, and sometimes been letting my beard get kind of out of control too, and, well, I sort of like looking a little bit like a Wildling, it turns out.

I have since trimmed things up a little. It didn’t go over well with my youngest. Oh, well. I’ll try to do better next time.

My wife and daughter singing the Pixies

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We don’t know all the words to too many lullabies, so we sing the ones we do know the words to. This will probably come back to bite us in the years ahead. For now, though: Pretty good.

Doughboys’ Tournament of Chompions: Munch Madness: Mac Attack

I can’t believe how invested I became in Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell’s quest to determine the best menu item at McDonald’s in a 64-seed tournament that spawned hours and hours of delightfully funny audio featuring all-time home-run guests like Jon Gabrus and Nicole Byer, who gleefully feed into the often warm, sometimes antagonistic, always entertaining chemistry between the two hosts. I have also never found myself wanting to go to McDonald’s more in my entire life. I have hit the drive-thru a couple of times since, and the boys are right: The McDonald’s fountain Coke does just hit different.

Sound Only

I’ve lost track of whether or not a 38-year-old is considered a millennial, but I’m quite confident that I’m not exactly plugged into “the millennial lifestyle” as my teammates Justin Charity and Micah Peters discuss it on their podcast, which relaunched this summer. Doesn’t matter, though, because I love hearing Charity and Micah talk to each other even if I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Their conversation about Dave Chappelle was great. After listening to their Travis Scott episode, I felt like I kind of understood who he is and why he occupies the space he does in pop culture now. I had no idea how they were going to get me to give a shit about set photos from The Batman, but this they not only got me there, but wended their way toward blaming 50 Cent for needing to know who Groot is to have a conversation on the internet, which is something for which Abraham Lincoln did not die. The show is good, it's getting better, it’s fun to hear them talk their shit, and Charity’s regular bellowing of “I, TOO, AM AMERICA” has made me smile for four straight months. 

Siobhan’s letters and notes

She’s in first grade now, and she’s taken to communicating her feelings through the written word. A lot.

I won’t pretend that I loved all of these in the moment. I can only get so upset, though, when she’s already writing with such a clear voice. (And trying to use proper punctuation. (And drawing little cartoons to drive the point home.)

Palm Springs

I’m having a hard time remembering too many specifics about it right now, which probably means it’d be a good thing to rewatch over the holidays. But, as I’m sure many people noted many months before we got around to watching it, a comedy about living the same day over and over again, and about trying to figure out how to make your life mean something when everything seems meaningless, scratched a pretty particular, and particularly important, itch this year. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve eaten up every second of Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti together.

I’m pretty sure I cried, although this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean much.  Also, put Conner O’Malley in more things.

Joining our union’s bargaining committee

I won’t say too much about this, but I will say that becoming an active participant in the process of a labor union negotiating its first contract with management has been an extremely educational experience. It’s pushed me to have conversations, sometimes difficult ones, about our priorities as a staff and a company. It's helped me get closer with the other past and present members of the BC, and has led me to start developing relationships with members of our staff that I otherwise might not have had much of an opportunity to get to know.

The organizing work takes time, effort, and energy, but trying to do what I can to help take better care of my colleagues has been well worth all of that. Here’s hoping that in 2021 we can reach a deal that helps make our workplace even better, stronger, and more equitable for all of us.

Publishing a story about Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup

I swear this is true: After I accepted my offer to work at The Ringer, but before I started, I told a friend that one thing I was excited about was that you had the chance to work on offbeat stuff here, in both the “kind of weird” and “not about the NBA” senses. That, I thought, might maybe open the door to me getting to write a story about a Saturday Night Live sketch I saw when I was a teenager about Stevie Nicks from Fleetwod Mac running a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant in Sedona, Arizona — a sketch that I wasn’t sure anyone else remembered, but that was stuck in my head forever.

That story ran on May 26.

A lot of people seemed to like it.

Accomplishing this goal was, as dumb as this might sound, a highlight of my year, and, honestly, a highlight of my career. I’d like to do some more stuff like this next year, time permitting; we’ll see. Whether or not I do, I got to do this. I’ll always have that.

[kiwi-strawberry-banana]

Modern day au Skeksis/ Mystics, part 2

SkekSa the Mariner:

Really, not a lot changed with her.

Relationship with the Sifa actually got even better after the Skeksis were no longer considered Lords.

She is still greatly respected and is still the Captain.

She still sails the seas with the Sifa, though she has also begun to aid them in actual modern day jobs instead of living like pirates.

Has entire maps set up for fishermen Gelfling so they know where the best spots for what sea creatures are.

Accidently monopolized the fishing empire on Thra.

Still works hard for the best life for the Sifa.

Is trying to get along better with her Mystic half at the request of the Sifa.

Its........ a work in progress.

Actually visits the land more often and has gotten in touch with some Skeksis and Mystics.

Has grown closest with SkekTek and SkekVar.

Living her best life.

UrSan the Swimmer:

Not a lot changed with her either.

There is a large lake by the Commune where the other Mystics live, so she visits more often.

Teaches the Gelfing of the Commune how to swim.

Those that wish to travel with the Sifa will be guided by her.

Is also trying to work on her relationship with SkekSa. Again, a work in progress.

The don't necessarily hate each other, but they also don't miss one another when they are apart.

Works with the Gelfling to ensure the waters stay clean and pure as technological advancements are made.

That is one of the few things that SkekSa agrees with her on and helps out with.

Enjoys her days swimming and living her best life.

SkekLi the Satirist:

Was literally tripping over himself when he found out that the Skeksis were no longer Lords of the Crystal.

The others tried to say he was still banned from the Castle.

Aughra let him back in.

May or may not be part of the reason why a bunch of Skeksis left.

Aughra thinks he is an absolute riot and is especially amused by how much he annoys everyone else.

He has taken to doing stand up and actually becomes a famous comedian.

The Skeksis may not like his humor, but the Gelfling love it.

He becomes genuinely liked and appreciated by the Gelfling for his jokes and humor.

Becomes close friends with mainly Gelfling.

He can and will put up posters for his comedy specials all over the castle and will gloat about it to anyone within a one mile radius.

Absolutley loving life.

UrLii the Storyteller:

He thought about leaving the Caves of Grot.

For like five minutes.

Chose to stay because the idea of leaving the caves was just unappealing to him.

Became an anonymous author under the name "Argot the Relic".

His books are sold out the moment they are put on the shelves.

Maudra Argot isn't as big of a fan because everyone thinks shes the author.

Upside, the Caves of Grot have been getting more visitors and it has become a very popular tourist destination.

The Grottan clan has become very popular thanks to UrLii.

Has become penpals with UrTih and UrSol.

SkekAyuk the Gourmand:

Still lives in the Castle, but travels often.

Became a wildly renowned chef and food critic.

Has multiple Gordon Ramsey style tv shows.

As well as multiple cook books.

He gets to eat and cook all the time and couldn't be happier.

Aside from SkekLii and SkekEkt, he is amongst the most famous of the Skeksis.

Not as well liked due to his prejudices against the Gelfling still.

His chunk has only gotten chunkier.

UrAmaj the Cook:

Actually lives in the Castle, along with UrUtt and UrNol.

Chose to live there after finding life in both the Valley and Commune unsatisfactory.

Reached out the SkekAyuk first and worked a deal out with the Skeksis.

Is SkekAyuks coworker.

Is the co author of the cook books and also the voice of reason when it comes to the cooking shows.

Trying desperately to have SkekAyuk not be so bigoted towards the Gelfling with mixed results.

Also has helped in developing dishes that Gelfling can actually eat.

Has also been working on getting the Skeksis to at least slaughter the animals before eatting them.

Be more humane about it please.

Enjoys making more than just Mystic food anymore.

SkekEkt the Ornamentalist:

Also lives at the Castle still.

Has made his own clothing lines and is particularly popular amongst the Vapra.

Also has his own makeup line and runway show.

Now that he is distinguished even more so amongst the Skeksis, he is an even bigger drama queen than before.

More respectful towards Gelfling compared to SkekAyuk, but definitely patronizing towards them.

Actually ended up becoming good friends with SkekLi when he came back and has even had him as a guest at a few runway shows.

Collaborates with UrUtt and has a respectful relationship with his Mystic half.

UrUtt the Weaver:

Went with UrAmaj to live in the Castle.

It was actually SkekEkt that reached out to UrUtt after seeing the impressive stitchwork he could do.

UrUtt and SkekEkt both worked together to help modernize some of the Skeksis and Mystics fashion.

Not all took to the new styles, though some, Such as SkekLi and a few in the Commune, came to love the styles.

Ended up having a good relationship with his Skeksis half.

Was always a bit of a drama queen, but being around SkekEkt made it a lot worse.

Started their own fashion tv show and is one of the judges.

SkekEkt will occasionally join as a guest judge, but he has enough on his plate as is.

Makes outfits for UrSus orphanage in his spare time and donates all of them anonymously.

SkekOk the Scribe:

Lives in Har'ar.

Worked with the All Maudra and greatly expanded the Vapran Library.

Also began the arduous task of actually making sure all Gelfling were literate.

He did not just make a huge library for all those books to go unread!

There is actually a tower attatched to the Library where SkekOk lives.

Aside from SkekSa and SkekGra, he became very close with the Gelfling, especially the family of the All Maudra.

He even started programs for farmers to send their childlings to lessons where they may learn for a couple hours and still be back home soon enough to continue to help with the farm work.

Acts as though his interest in Gelfling is superficial. All the Gelfling closest to him know it is genuine.

He is best friends with the Librarian, whom has become his newest gossip partner.

Still keeps in touch with SkekEkt and SkekLach.

UrAc the Scribe:

Lives in the Commune.

Teaches the childlings how to read and write, as well as the adults who may not know how.

Works with SkekOk and receives books and writing materials for the orphanage in exchange for original stories or first hand copies of UrLiis newest book.

Has his own blog where he talks about things from the latest goings on to the weather.

Usually has a spot dedicated for which celebrity did what recently.

SkekOk is his source of information for that spot.

Close friends with SkekOk.

Works closely with Podlings to translate books into their language as well, so they may have more literature.

SkekLach the Collector:

With UrIms help, they actually got the pustules taken care of!!!

Hooray!!

Without the pustules and always being sick, SkekLach became infinitely more pleasant to be around.

They still complained, but not nearly as much as before, and even had something decent to say every now and then.

Still lives in the Castle, keeps in close touch with SkekOk.

Didn't know what to do for the longest time.

Just had their collection.

Seeing SkekOk expand the Vapran Library actually gave SkekLach an idea.

They opened up a museum.

They have such a lovely collection doing nothing and gathering dust.

A museum was the perfect way to have their collection displayed in a way that satisfied SkekLach.

They also quickly discovered that some stuff in their collection was more valuable than they originally thought.

Their museum is actually super popular and Skeklach actually ends up discovering that they like having their museum.

They don't really care about all the nerdy history and everything, but having their collections displayed so lovingly and actually being appreciated?

That makes SkekLachs day.

UrSen the Monk:

Stayed in the Valley.

Helped UrZah out with his religion and is the one who helped build the main church and temple in the Valley.

Ended up starting his own religion on accident, aiding Gelfling who wanted to lead their lives as monks.

The Valley is now filled with monks and those that practice UrZahs religion.

Thankfully, the two groups get along well and there is little to no fighting.

UrSen enjoys his life and has become a great teacher to the Gelfling monks.

SkekNa the Slave Master:

Another Skeksis that didn't take the changes very well.

Joined SkekUngs failed rebellion.

As one of the more violent Skeksis, Aughra kept a close eye on him.

He was put in jail at one point for beating a Podling.

He was put in jail again shortly after being released after he cut the finger off of a Gelfling.

Like SkekMal, he got the talk that Aughra had no issue imprisoning him forever if he couldn't behave.

Unlike SkekMal, he didn't take Aughras advice.

As it stands, he is still imprisoned.

Raunip is working with him to see if perhaps his love for music can be worked into something healthy.

The process is slow going.

UrNol the Herbalist:

Went with UrAmaj to live at the Castle.

Worked with him and SkekAyuk to change the Skeksis dishes to be more palatable for Gelfling.

Created a large garden at the Castle.

Became close with SkekAyuk and showed him plants the Skeksis had never seen before.

He finally got to keep a plant that spits acid and he is very happy about it.

Also works with UrIm, sending plants and herbs used as medicine.

Has started a business of crossbreeding various plants and herbs to create new varieties and flavors.

Enjoying the peaceful life.

SkekShod the Treasurer:

Went back to the Castle for a little bit before leaving again.

He found there was no place for him there.

Ended up in the Commune, shortly before SkekVar showed up.

Quickly realized that the Mystics had absolutely no concept about how money worked on Thra.

Really had no concept on how material possessions in general worked on Thra.

He began to set up a system where the Commune would actually be able to function and survive in the modern world instead of having a bunch of broke Gelfling and Podlings with no idea how the world works.

Set up banking systems for individuals, set up the funds for the Commune as a whole, and even started a class teaching Gelfling, Podlings, and Mystics alike how the monetary system on Thra works.

Also helped set up a safe system so that any valuable possessions would be kept well guarded and away from any thieves.

Realized two things very quickly:

One, that he didn't have to worry about being harshly judged or mocked by those in the Commune.

Two, that the quieter, shy childlings were drawn to him.

And three, that he absolutely adored the quiet childlings and saw a bit of himself in them.

Many of the quieter young ones grew up and ran successful businesses, often given startup donations by an "anonymous backer".

UrYod the Numerologist:

Lived in the Commune.

Became a teacher at the Orphanage, specializing in teaching math.

Despite his stuttering, he was a very popular teacher and excelled in his work.

Was the first Mystic to actually get a grasp on what SkekShod was trying to teach them and, in turn, taught the other Mystics.

Worked closely with SkekShod and developed a good relationship with him.

Was the one to set the various schedules of the Commune, as well as the one to make sure they all ran at the correct time.

Even if they weren't in his class, he worked closely with any childling that was struggling in the orphanage.

Both he and SkekShod ended up becoming visited frequently by the quieter childlings or ones going through issues in life.

When all were asleep, he would meet up with SkekShod and the two would discuss which childling was having which issue and how best to take care of it.

Theres all the Skeksis and Mystics in the Modern AU!!

[gigsoupmusic]

INTERVIEW - MICKO WESTMORELAND ON 'VELVET GOLDMINE' AND LIFE WITH THE MELLOTRONICS

Micko Westmoreland first came to the public's attention as the enigmatic Jack Fairey in the star-studded glam rock fake biopic 'Velvet Goldmine', and since then has done everything from making electronica as The Bowling Green to the sharp edged new wave of his current project Micko & The Mellotronics. With that band on the verge of releasing their second single, a double A-side with the timely 'Noisy Neighbours 'and 'You Killed My Father' (featuring the late Neil Innes), he spoke to Gigsoup to tell all... Starting at the beginning, you got your first break appearing in the film ‘Velvet Goldmine’…  Quite a baptism of fire! Yep, I was fresh out of film school with little acting experience. So I did a ton of research, suspended all activities other than glam rock ones; late mornings, blurry eyeliner, became a kind of ‘Our Lady of the Flowers’, to quote Jean Genet. I did appear on set however with well prepared sleeve notes. Ziggy/Hunky and early Roxy had been teenage territory. Toni Colette really helped me during filming, showing me where and how to move and stand in frame etc. which I really wasn’t aware of and she was such a wonderful person to hang out with. Ewan McGregor was enormous in the 90s but treated you like a complete equal. I’ve acted the fiction of being a sensational rock star, my embalmed alter ego is now moth balled and hermetically sealed for posterity. What do you make of the film’s recent re-appraisal – it was panned at the time but now it’s considered a cult classic A lot of the film heavyweights liked it at the time and have consistently sung its praises over the last 20 years, which has contributed to its legacy, plus Todd Haynes is now seen as a 24-carat auteur. 1998 wasn’t ready for a kaleidoscopic pansexual odyssey. Velvet Goldmine truly tapped into a teenage hormonal feeling, so the audience is responsible for its longevity I think, people have grown old with it and new fans have discovered it. You had quite a lot of success making electronic music as The Bowling Green but then switched tack to making more song-based stuff.  What’s the story there? The music I was making was becoming increasingly filmic, so I moved into movie sound tracks for a while and did two film scores and a few documentaries with my brother; acclaimed director Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice, Colette). One of them, Echo Park L.A., won best drama at Sundance in 2006! I was becoming more attuned to a literary narrative and was listening to Dylan’s Time out of Mind and Beck’s Sea Change at the time – couple that with improvements in technology that weren’t so reliant on sampler and keyboard. I started playing much more guitar again, my first love and now my primary instrument for writing. You made a couple of albums under your own name but then formed Micko & The Mellotronics – your first ‘band’ project.  What was the thinking behind that move? I was very much used to working on my own. I made a couple of solo albums, one which Terry Edwards (P.J. Harvey/Holy Holy) released on his Sartorial label called ‘Wax & Wayne’, and ‘Yours Etc Abc’, on my own Landline records imprint, which I believe was the main unconscious projection into putting a live act together. The person doing PR for it asked, ‘Who’s in the band?’ When I realized I didn’t have one, it made sense to look for folk to start pushing sounds around. How would you sum up the band to someone you hadn’t heard you before?  Can you name us a few bands that have influenced its sound? We get compared to the Buzzcocks quite a lot, I’ll take that. I’ve loved Magazine since teenage, Television too. I also dig Serge Gainsbourg majorly and bands like The Silver Apples. I’m really into Iso Tomita, the 70’s electronic musician and of course Mr. Eno too. People have commented that the double A side, soon to be released, is like early Genesis but I think it’s much closer to The Rutles. Patrick from R.O.C. said there was violence to the sound. I do pride the writing on an intricacy and eccentricity but without getting prog about it. Talk us through the Mellotronics members and their individual flavours... Nick Mackay a friend referred me to. He was playing in a two-piece called ‘Barricades’, and was clearly a very good drummer, real flare as a player/performer and had the magic ingredient for any band – he was a thoroughly decent chap you could spend a ton of time with. Jon Klein is our very own rock star hiding in plain sight. He has a CV better than the rest of us put together: Banshees, Sinead O’Connor to name a few and of course his own band Specimen. I lent Jon my amp when we were on the same bill. I gave him a copy of my previous album and he contacted me the next day, which I considered a big thumbs up. He’s very quick, obscenely talented and has revolutionized day-to-day working practice. In short a turbo charged V12 engine has been carefully placed inside a Hillman imp, with fresh brake pads added. Vicky Carroll the bassist also came through personal referral, Haydn Hades who does stand up. At the time she was playing in a band the ‘Owls of Now’, a very bright lady indeed. She really got what the band was about and had great style. The dynamic of now the band get on and its chemistry is essential to longevity. Having a woman on board was important to us, so we really lucked out by finding such a smart cookie in Vicky. So far, you’ve shared ‘The Finger’, your first single, and now two new tracks, which will (eventually) be released as a 7” single.  Talk us through ‘Noisy Neighbors’ and ’You Killed My Father’. Noisy Neighbours came about from my experience with dealing with serial complainers whilst living in a housing co-op. We shot the video with filmmaker Ashley Jones (www.thechaoesengineers.com) in the next door location the inhabitants of the song were occupying, so we had to be quiet. Of course some complaints are genuine but most were more telling of the complainant than complainee. There are control issues, which come about as a result of trying to micromanage your environment beyond your own four walls. I wanted to make a witty statement about that without being over critical or condemning. Raising a single eyebrow over that type of behavior. ‘You Killed My Father’, the double A side was inspired by Neil Innes R.I.P. (Monty Python, Bonzo Dog, The Rutles). So of course I was thrilled when he agreed to play on it. I was introduced to him through an artist friend Harry Pye. We inadvertly created a supergroup together called the Spammed and meet up once a year to record for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Last session Tony Visconti produced a cover of Bolan’s ‘Get it on’, for us. It comprises, Rat Scabies (The Damned), Horace Panter (The Specials), Neil when he was with us and actor/comedian Kevin Eldon on vocs, I play guitar. The song relates to my childhood, growing up in Leeds and has a Shakespearean quality. I checked the prose with an expert to make sure I hadn’t over egged the pudding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5iswf8GG6o You seem to be able to attract some interesting names to collaborate with - Horace Panter of The Specials and the late Neil Innes recently, but also members of The Blockheads, Madness, Stranglers and Goldfrapp in the past.  Who would be top of your collaborative wish list? I’d love to do something with Eno again. We became friendly during the mid nineties. I was tutored by him, whilst working on an art show called ‘Self Storage’ with Laurie Anderson but never made it into the studio. A wild card like Wendy Carlos, famed for the soundtrack of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ would be great too. Likewise, your videos have featured some interesting names from British comedy…  What do they bring to the party?  Anyone else you’d like to get on board if you had free reign? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDr7nkOQN9Q All the comedy connections came from Kevin Eldon initially, a super bright and truly wonderful guy. He introduced me to Paul Putner at a Specials gig. Paul’s a brilliant bloke and really likes the band. He found the remarkable Suzy Kane for us. All three have taken excellent roles. Suzy had a lot of input in Noisy Neighbours, suggesting wardrobe and even shots to Ashley as we were making it; we really have had tremendous fun with our contributors. Obviously, Chris Morris would be fantastic but I’m a little afraid to knock. We hear the debut M&TM album is close to completion – what have you got in store for us? A psychedelic mish mash of fable, sound collage and idea. With the new single, 3 of the songs are now out there. On a musical front Horace Panter out of The Specials has guested on a couple of tracks for us and of course we have one of Neil Innes’ last performances too. I’ve written a song about Imelda Marcos, she seemed like a person who was way ahead of her time, a modern template for a highly manipulative battle-axe. I have an author friend in his 60s who’s an eminent  psychologist, (Georg Eifert - Anxiety Happens) so I wrote a song called ‘The Fear’, with a lot of his theories in mind. There’s also one too called ‘Sick and Tired’, it’s not about what I’m eed up about, but like Noisy Neighbours it’s a comment about complaint. When writing I try to look at what gets talked about by everyday people and base some of the songs around those themes. Earwig on phone conversations on buses, pick up discarded bits of paper, when you get into the habit you’ll be amazed what you find. So I get on the 38 and set my brain to record. There’s also a fair amount about growing up on the record too, which I hope all can relate to. I think you have to start with a good idea, that’s on any level otherwise you’re unlikely to get far. From my art college days I got into the habit of noting things down, if you don’t it often escapes you. It’s difficult to marry a multitude of ingredients and let’s face it the world is full of plenty, pair it down and make it resonate. Anyone who tells you otherwise is telling porkies. To make something that stands the test of time is more difficult still. But I’m not afraid of the work and I enjoy ‘the doing’, for me that’s what it’s all about. I believe that as individuals we have a natural tendency to evolve, if we choose to see it that way and trust, it’ll ‘self fulfill’. If you’ll allow yourself to tap into that expansion creatively, you’ll always find inspiration. Micko & The Mellotronics release 'Noisy Neighbours / You Killed My Father' on Landline Records on April 17 with the 7" single schedule to hit the shops on June 27. Read the full article

[radramblog]

we live in a society (that has progressed)

There’s always an interminable shift, a flux, in culture that can be hard to spot if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for. As times change, people grow, and media is released, causing perspectives and opinions in the general psyche to sway over the course of human cultural history.

Basically, the Joker is allowed to be funny again, and that’s a good thing.

I’m not going to bother explaining who the Joker is to you, like I often do when I’m introducing a post like this. It’s the fucking Joker, I’d be shocked if you didn’t know what the character is. You have to be online to see this post, after all, and if you’re on the obscure rabbit-hole known as My Tumblr, you’re online enough to see Joker memes and such.

The Joker is an inherently ridiculous character. He’s literally a clown man, a foil to the deadpan Batman, humour literally written into his name. And while I cannot possibly capture the full breadth of his various iterations and interpretations over the course of DC Comics’s long history, a lot less people are going to have read the comics than seen the adaptations of such, and those are what has stuck out in the public consciousness. There’s a few versions in particular I’d like to highlight before I get into the meat of this.

In particular, the early visual interpretations of the character are, well, monumentally silly. It’s impossible to talk about the 1966 Adam West Batman series without an understanding of just how camp the whole thing was, and the Joker is no exception to this. Even Jack Nicholson’s performance in the 1989 film is inherently silly despite it’s overall serious tone, a villain who kills people with a chemical called, I shit you not, Smylex. Considering the actor, and especially considering what came just a year before that film, such a portrayal is actually kind of a confusing cultural milestone.

And that thing that came a year beforehand is The Killing Joke, potentially the most iconic Batman comic, nay, DC comic there is. And with it, potentially the most sympathetic portrayal of the Joker that there had been so far. A man driven mad by exposure, a situation he was only in to afford his family’s bills. It presents the most clear image of him as Batman’s mirror- literally, at times, and yet shows some of his most shocking brutality at the same time. The idea of the comic, if I may be so bold, is to imply that the line between Batman and the Joker isn’t quite so thick as it appears at first glance.

We don’t talk about the animated version of the Killing Joke.

I’m going to move right past the Animated Series in general, not because it’s bad or anything, but because I’m relatively unfamiliar with it (this may be a reoccurring theme) I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, the ones my family had on VHS, and they sure didn’t have the Joker in them. (The Gray Ghost and….I think a Scarecrow episode? Which was a hell of a thing to see as a kid). It does have his portrayal with Mark Hamill as the voice actor, though, which is frankly such a choice decision.

The thing that made the Joker, and the Batman franchise as a whole, come back into the limelight was obviously the Nolan movies, specifically The Dark Knight. Being the face of such a critically acclaimed movie with such an incredible performance by Heath Ledger (I am obliged to stan, he’s from Perth, I’ve met his stepdad) is obviously going to get the name back in the books, even if it’s such a different version from what had previously been seen.

Ledger’s Joker has a humour, sure, but it’s a significantly more morbid one than previous incarnations. Previous Jokers killed people, sure, but The Dark Knight added a level of brutality to the whole thing that made the character so much more serious, pun not intended. One can largely attribute this to the darker tone of the film he appears in compared to previous Batmans (especially the 90s films), because in those versions the Joker was, well, not a serious character. He doesn’t interact with the world in the same way other people do, his values are completely alien. Ledger’s Joker has a very specific ideology, one people can understand, and more relevantly, one people can misunderstand.

The actual post begins here.

Ledger’s Joker has been the icon of the edgy teenager since The Dark Knight came out and was watched by millions of them. Something about the character speaks to them, something about being an outsider, not like the other people, and also both smart and violent, which are attributes that 13-year-olds idolise.

A Joker profile picture has long been one of the biggest red flags on the internet. A sure sign that someone is going to say the dumbest fucking thing imaginable, or something hideously offensive apropos of absolutely nothing. This isn’t even getting into how the character became an icon for the Gamers Rise Up movement, which I will remind you that a fair few people actually took seriously. A legion of the worst of nerd culture- misogynistic, racist, and toxic folks who have nothing better to do than yell at people on Reddit.

Where as I, the cultured individual, explain things to people on Tumblr. Very different. But the point is, this specific version of the character is an anarchist, out to prove that, at the end of the day, every single person has the potential to become a monster, that chaos is the nature of humanity, somewhat akin to his portrayal and point in The Killing Joke- all it takes is the right thing to set you off. This twisting of the message into “im better and smarter than u also I will kill u” is frankly kind of disgusting.

The point I’m trying to get to is that for the last decade-ish, The Joker, a character built around humour and gratuity, has become incredibly unfunny. From the internet fuckwits to the grim Ledger portrayal, the character with Joke in their name has been impossible to laugh at.

Another factor contributing to this is the growing awareness and increased sympathy for mentally ill people, which is where Joker (the film) comes in. Now, obviously, the understanding of mental issues is not a bad thing, and I’d love to see this trend continue. But my understanding is that Joker and its titular character are not a particularly humourous time, despite the character literally being a comedian this time.

To be clear, I have not seen the movie, and I have no intention to, so feel free to completely ignore my opinion on this. But the fact that the film seemed to have made all the GRU stuff worse is not a good sign for it.

However, as in life and in media, all things shall pass, and that does include the Joker. Ignoring Suicide Squad (because I know like nothing about the Joker’s place in that film and don’t want to research it), late 2010-s on portrayals of the Joker appear to be returning to the characters roots somewhat, though to be fair, both of the things I’m basing my judgement are comedy features.

The first is, oddly enough, the Lego Batman movie. I can understand not having seen this film, because from the outside, it didn’t look or sound good, but the whole thing is basically a love letter to Batman/DC as a franchise, complete with possibly the silliest incarnation of the character so far. This Joker is utterly obsessed with proving himself as Batman’s equal, as the greatest villain to rival the greatest hero. He’s probably the most potentially homoerotic interpretation, which is kind of silly considering he’s literally a Lego dude. But the movie is funny, and so is he, which is the key point.

The other recent addition to this list is the Harley Quinn animated series, where the Joker obviously plays a significant role. Now, I’m not really familiar at all with this interpretation, having not seen the show, but considering the memes going around about Batman apparently not doing oral, and that having stemmed from this show, it’s not hard to imagine the Joker’s portrayal being similarly silly- even if his canonical abusee is the protagonist. Like, I’m pretty sure he’s a bastard in this one, but he’s also the butt of the joke, considering the series is in large part about Harley getting over him and moving past that part of her life (and ideally hooking up with Poison Ivy, because, come on)

I guess my point is that the Joker is an inherently comic character, in all that entails. You cannot have the Joker not be in some way silly without making massive changes to his design, his characterisation, and his ideals- which is pretty much what has happened in the past few years. I mean, the guy’s got bright green hair, he wears purple suits, he kills people with laughing gas.

This comic, by artist FruitEater, is kind of what inspired this whole post. It’s such a silly little thing from a silly little trend, but it really stuck in my head, and not just because it reminded me of my past self- a child who was super into Crazy Frog when I was, like, 10. It’s a comic that couldn’t exist were it not for the passage of time beyond the era of edgy Joker. Time has moved on- Gamers Rise Up is dying (the subreddit got banned, where else are they supposed to go?), cringe culture is dying, and the Joker is a character that’s allowed to be funny again.

We can laugh with the Joker again.

[thefloatingstone]

Finally got around to watching the new Duck Tales premiere (I still don’t know if Duck Tales is one word or 2??? Curse you, logo!!)

I wasn’t really into the first half, but the second half was much better. Which is fine because it’s clear the second half is more the direction the series wants to go in. Better the first half be weak and the second half be strong rather than the other way around.

The art style isn’t really my favourite but I’ve enjoyed and even loved shows with bad art styles before (I’m looking at you TMNT 2k3) So I can at least ignore it. And hey. The art style is for the most part hand-drawn from what I can tell so I really can’t complain too loudly. I like the colour scheme though. And I could ignore the art style after a while thanks to some nice key poses here and there.

The triplet’s voices are... hmm.... not as painful as I thought. Mostly because as I was hoping, the really cringy stuff was all in the trailer and the rest of the show is far less interested it being “hip with the kids”. So I can... get use to it I suppose.

I found Donald’s dialogue to be pretty bad in the first half. It’s really out of character and written in a way that he talks pretty much the same as the kids but this improved in the second half. Although it still feels slightly off here and there. I dunno. Again maybe I’ll get use to it. It’s just weird hearing him use what I can sadly only describe as “millennium speak”. But they got him down pat in terms of actual personality so really his dialogue COULD be considered a nit pick since the actual character is in tact.

Webby is pretty annoying... but I was thinking and between “I am a pwecious angel evewybody wuvs!” and “modern female stand-up comedian shrieking” I GUESS I have to pick the lesser of two evils there. Seriously though... she’s gonna get grating VERY quickly. Webby was testing my patience in the original show too though so.... take that as you want I guess? At least she’s not gonna be a menace screwing up the boys’ plans and games and then in the end be the previous darling who can do no wrong and who never gets scolded.

Have I mentioned I don’t like Webby much?

Have I mentioned I generally don’t enjoy female characters in cartoons much?

Scrooge is top notch and I cannot think of a single thing wrong with him in this show. Tennant is nailing it, his personality is perfect and I like we’re getting some of his jerk persona in this show which is rather absent from the original show... just hopefully not too much jerk because the original show still has the best Scrooge so....

Honestly? Good so far.

Lots of tiny tiny nods to duck continuity in the show but done in a way you won’t catch it if you only know Duck Tales as a cartoon. So it wasn’t really referential humour as much as it was easter eggs and hints of what kind of backstory we get here. Also the show didn’t linger on any of it thank goodness. Nothing irks me more than a show nudging you with their elbow and winking insanely at you to get the joke.

All in all pretty good.

I’m hoping we keep Della at arms length though... because reintroducing her to this continuity is gonna open the biggest can of worms ever... and it’s either gonna be lots of tears and feels.... or it’s going to be a giant dumpster fire.

So..... looking forward to that I guess.

Oh but no trumpets in the opening theme song. 0 stars.

On a more serious note though, the sad fact of the matter is that the new Duck Tales is never going to be the original. And no, I don’t mean in terms of content. I dunno if the average cartoon lover knows this, but Duck Tales is actually one of the most important cartoons ever created. And no, that’s not a hyperbole. I actually state that as fact.

Quick history lesson;

Duck Tales was the very first cartoon created specifically for syndication. It wasn’t Disney’s first cartoon, which was Gummi Bears, but it was the very first cartoon, as in EVER, made with the actual intention of being syndicated. Before Duck Tales, once a cartoon’s run was over that was it. It simply would not be run on TV any more unless it was insanely successful like the Flintstones or Scooby Doo. But before that? Nope. a cartoon was made, then finished and forgotten.

On top of this, the only cartoons being made during this time were based on toys. And as much as we love them today, remember this was THE ONLY CARTOONS BEING MADE AT THE TIME. So whatever was being sold in stores was what you were gonna see on TV. Regardless of quality, story, concept or characters. And once that toy was gone so was its show. You were at the mercy of what was being sold. and the shows were at the mercy of writing episodes around new characters or items in the toy line. The original TMNT is a good example. Where toys were given to the show creators and told “write an episode around this thing we want to sell. We don’t care how or how good it is just do it.”

So along comes Duck Tales. a show created by Disney, expressly for syndication, trying to PROVE (and make no mistake, they were trying to prove something here) that you could have a successful show without relying on toy sales. Yes, Duck Tales DID have toys and characters like Webby were introduced as a marketing gimmick, but the show was independant from toy sales. It was a show first, toys second.

Also remember that this was 1987, The Little mermaid had not come out yet. Disney was still in a very bad place financially and was pretty much off people’s radar as far as movies and new content goes.

ALSO remember that Disney didn’t really have a “tv department” yet. So most of the key animation for Duck Tales was done by their animators coming from feature productions.

It ALSO aired with a premiere movie. Something completely unheard of at the time.

Duck Tales was an insane risk but guess what? it made MONEY. And people LIKED it. In fact they liked it so much that Duck Tales spawned the Disney Afternoon as we know it. All Disney cartoons following it owed their existence to Duck Tales.

And following this were competitors. Nickelodeon. Cartoon Network. Yes we also have several factors to help aid this, including John K. with Ren and Stimpy (showing that on network television cartoons had more free reign and could get away with more, thereby making it attractive to studios to go network instead) but If not for Duck Tales showing that it was possible to show Cartoons could exist without toy sales, we’d be in a VERY different world right now.

So simply... the new show just can’t be that. It can’t be a game changer because the Disney channel has no real game to change right now. Thanks to Gravity Falls things are swinging in a good direction for them anyway (despite some setbacks like cancelling Wander over Yonder).

However, the new Duck Tales can hopefully be a propeller to steer the Disney channel in the right direction that it’s heading in.

I bring this up because I know there are criticism that “well this isn’t the original”. and no. It’s not the original. Because the environment isn’t what it was when the original came out and thank goodness??? Like.. things were REALLY shitty when Duck Tales came out????

My point is; The new show cannot be the original, and so although comparisons in some cases and just, such as things like characterisation, art style etc etc. Other things are simply not something you can compare. like “Success” or “What the show is trying to accomplish”. And that Nostalgia blinding in this case is honestly not fair at all, simply because of context.

It’s not gonna be the same show because things don’t suck as badly as they did when the original show came and kicked down everyone’s doors and said “alright fuckers! We own this joint now!”

With that said, I’ll keep watching. I usually take about 3 - 5 episodes of a show to decide if I like the direction it’s going in. But at this point I’m fine with watching more of it.

If nothing else thank goodness Donald is actually a main character this time!!! If I’d criticise the original for anything in hindsight, having read the comics now, it’s that Donald wasn’t around in the original.

Just.... don’t fuck up the whole Della situation.... or there’s gonna be a trainwreck we’re gonna struggle to get past.

(although screw this Disney “trying to be cute” formula that rears its ugly head now and again)

[the-desolated-quill]

Victory Of The Daleks - Doctor Who blog (Matt Smith And The Amazing Technicolor Pepper Pots)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

When did Mark Gatiss lose his bollocks? Back when he worked as part of the dark comedy quartet the League of Gentlemen, he wrote some truly great stuff. Even his first Who story, The Unquiet Dead, was pretty good, although he was somewhat hindered because he was having to write for children as well as adults and so had to dampen his dark material down a bit. But since then his work has slipped further and further downhill. The Idiot’s Lantern was rubbish. The less said about his work on the god awful Sherlock, the better. Now we’ve got Victory Of The Daleks.

The Doctor and Amy arrive in WW2 to meet up with Winston Churchill, who has a new secret weapon that could help turn the tide of the war in Britain’s favour. But these so called Ironsides may have a more sinister goal in mind...

First let’s quickly talk about the WW2 setting. Not exactly original, I know, considering we’ve already explored it in The Empty Child two parter, but to be fair that story was told more from the perspective of the civilians. We haven’t seen the soldiers and higher up’s perspective yet, so there could still be some gold in this mine yet. Pity they don’t bother digging for it.

Yes this is WW2, but it’s the stereotypical WW2. Pilots and generals shouting ‘tally-ho’ in OTT Received Pronunciation British accents. People saluting the Union flag while composer Murray Gold gives himself a patriotic boner with his constant fanfares crashing and banging in the background of every scene. Even Winston Churchill (who is portrayed exceptionally well by Ian McNeice) is little more than a caricature (did he have to smoke a cigar in every scene?). There’s no effort to really explore the grim reality of fighting in a war like this. There is an effort to get us to form an emotional connection with that woman whose boyfriend gets shot down whilst flying over the Channel, but it just felt a bit half-arsed. This is a romanticised version of war. Heroic men and women doing their bit for Queen and country, and back home in time for tea. Compared to the likes of, say, Genesis Of The Daleks where they don’t shy away from the morbid and tragic misery of battle, Victory Of The Daleks feels a bit pathetic by comparison.

While I’m not too fond of the romanticised WW2 setting, and this episode in general, I must confess I do love the first 15 minutes. The Daleks feel right at home here, which is not surprising considering that they’re supposed to be an allegory for the Nazis. And a shiny gold star has to go Matt Smith’s performance. His frustration toward Churchill and his pure rage toward the Daleks, culminating in him hitting one of them repeatedly with an oversized wrench, was incredibly powerful. After centuries of fighting these pepper pots, the Doctor has just about had enough of this shit, and Smith conveys that perfectly. He’s no slouch at the comedy neither. I love how he uses a Jammy Dodger to trick the Daleks into standing down. That feels so utterly Doctorly.

Ideally Victory Of The Daleks should have been a two part story, I feel. The first 15 minutes has some legitimately good ideas, but they’re not given the time to fully develop. Gatiss is clearly taking a lot of inspiration from the Patrick Troughton era story The Power Of The Daleks, with the Daleks operating from a position of weakness and tricking a bunch of humans into thinking they’re harmless (they even substitute the line ‘I am your servant’ with ‘I am your soldier’). But the reason why The Power Of The Daleks works so well is because it takes its time. We really get to know the characters and get drawn into their deception, making the final reveal that much more tragic and horrifying. It would have been really nice if the first 15 minutes could have been extended to a full episode. That way we could have explored Churchill’s desperation to win the war a bit more, we would get a chance to properly get to know Professor Bracewell, the supposed creator of the ‘Ironsides’, and perhaps draw out the mystery as to whether or not Bracewell is being genuine or not, with the reveal that he’s actually a robot making a great cliffhanger ending. It would also give us a chance to see just how cunning the Daleks are. That’s the reason why they’ve endured for so long after all. They’re not mindless killing machines. They’re scheming, malevolent killing machines, which The Power Of The Daleks managed to demonstrate so effectively.

So having rushed through quite possibly the most interesting part of the story, the Doctor takes the TARDIS to the Dalek spaceship. And this is where things go horribly wrong.

What are the Daleks most famous for? Killing. Russell T Davies understood that, hence why we got Dalek and The Parting Of The Ways. Two stories that demonstrated how merciless and unstoppable the Daleks were (before they were reduced to toothless stand up comedians during the David Tennant era). What are the Daleks not doing in this episode? Killing.

That’s really my main problem with Victory Of The Daleks. Outside of the Jammy Dodger scene, it feels like the majority of this episode consists of nothing but the Doctor and the Daleks just talking each other’s ears off, and nothing they have to say to each other is particularly interesting. As it goes on, you realise that the purpose of this story is not to entertain us, but rather to establish a new status quo for the Daleks. A new and improved Paradigm of Daleks that were no longer constantly fighting for survival. From this episode onward, they would be back in full force and would come in a variety of colours.

Yeah. You all knew this was coming. I’m sure you’re all excited to know what I thought of the Mighty Morphin Dalek Rangers. Take a random guess what I thought.

Seriously, whoever came up with this design, I hope they got sacked. They look fucking hideous. It’s not just the awful colour scheme. It’s everything. The plastic look. The over-sized midsection. The weird eyeball on a stalk. Their MASSIVE arses (which is apparently supposed to hold a secondary weapon that we will never get to see). And they’re so ridiculously tall to the point where the white Dalek Supreme’s domed head was inches from hitting a light fixture on the ceiling. The new design is just laughably bad. Even with a khaki paint job, the older Daleks look a squillion times better and I’m relieved that in the series to come, the BBC would eventually come to their senses and slowly phase out these new Daleks and subtly return to the old ones. So we’ll never know what was the mysterious purpose behind the yellow ‘Eternal’ Daleks. Never mind. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been very interesting.

But how did this new Paradigm come about? Well the Daleks have got their hands on this Progenitor thing that can create all these shiny new Daleks, except the Progenitor doesn’t recognise these Daleks as pure (oh the irony). They’re going to need a character reference. How about their greatest enemy? But they can’t just ask him obviously. They’ll have to lure him there and trick him into giving a reference. So how do they do that? Do they start attacking the Earth and killing people, knowing it will draw the Doctor’s attention eventually? Oh no. That’s far too sensible. Instead they invent a robot to pretend to invent them, even going to the trouble of implanting human memories and feelings into him, before becoming war machines for Winston Churchill. Then Churchill will call the Doctor because... despite coming across as obedient servants, they’re still suspicious enough to warrant calling a Time Lord for advice? Wait... so they want to look like allies, but their whole plan hinges on not looking like allies.

That makes no sodding sense.

So having been bored senseless with the Doctor and the Daleks’ constant monologuing about what they’re going to do to each other like kids in a school playground arguing over whose dad could beat up whose, the Daleks then reveal their trump card. Bracewell is actually a bomb. But don’t worry. Amy can solve that by making him horny. Um... I mean... reminding him of his humanity.

Putting aside the whole disarming a bomb through the power of love crap, since when did the Doctor turn into Mr. Spock? The same thing happened in The Beast Below where Amy figures out the solution using her humany goodness as though the Doctor is completely out of touch with human emotion. But we know that’s not the case. He’s alien, but he’s not that alien. Also Amy’s reaction to the Daleks escaping annoyed me. Yes they saved the Earth, but a bunch of multi-coloured space Nazis are now free to rain death and destruction across time and space. This is not what I call a win. Mind you, the Doctor annoyed me too at that point. He feels so powerless when the Daleks escape. If only he had a time machine. That way he could go back in time and stop the Daleks before they escape.

...

Oh wait. He does have a time machine. WHY DON’T YOU JUST GO BACK IN TIME AND STOP THE DALEKS BEFORE THEY ESCAPE?

So that was Victory Of The Daleks. It had some potential in the first 15 minutes, but it all turned to shit the moment the plot reared its ugly head. Better luck next time.

[gabbykaufman]

Mike Huckabee knows people hate his Twitter jokes

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee arriving at Trump Tower last November. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is well aware his Twitter witticisms elicit eye rolls and groans; he just doesn’t care.

The two-time presidential candidate’s 140-character comedy show frequently pops up in Twitter feeds of journalists and political operatives, inspiring professional critiques and even a Jimmy Kimmel skit, along with countless pleas to give his thumbs a rest.

His shtick consists of corny (and sometimes confusing) quips regarding various current events. Among other things, his freewheeling tweets have referred to Snoop Dogg as “Poop Dogg,” compared Senate Democrats to turkeys he’s hunted, and equated Comcast service, unfavorably, with the Obama administration.

Huckabee recently told Yahoo News that he embraces a genre he calls “groan humor,” and encourages his detractors to buzz off. “If it is absolutely causing you to be constipated, then for heaven’s sakes, get off my Twitter feed,” he said.

“I know there are people who will respond back with a smiley face, or an LOL, or some indication … they were at least slightly amused,” Huckabee said. “I find that pleasurable.”

A transcript of the interview, edited for clarity and length, is below.

 Do you write all your own tweets?

Yes, I don’t want to implicate anyone else in my activities that would forever scar their reputations and future.

They don’t go through any of your staff members or anything like that?

Much to their regret, no. It used to. It used to. In fact, when I was a candidate and everybody was so nervous about everything I would say. You know, I didn’t even have my own Twitter password. They kept it from me.

Really?

Yeah, there were so many people that were nervous about what I would do and of course now they know that they were very wise in feeling that way. But after the campaign I said, “I want to be able to do what I want.” So, I do.

Do you read the responses to your tweets?

Occasionally. I read some of them. And the ones that are mean towards me, I don’t care. That’s part of the deal and some of them are funny. Quite frankly, some of the things people say back to me — that are intended to be mean — I find amusing. But when they attack members of my family, to me that’s, that’s hateful.

Tell me about your joke-writing process.

Well, I tell people, look, I write for my own amusement. I find Twitter amusing to me. And so I share it, and a lot of people — you know, most of my humor is what I call groan humor, groaning people, oh boy. Groaning, g-r-o-a-n. Intentionally, It’s just sort of the kind of stuff that causes people to just maybe smile but they’re in on the joke, they get it, that it’s intended, tongue-in-cheek.

I picked out a few standout tweets of yours to see if you could give me background information or walk me through how you came up with them, or just give me your reaction to them now that some time has passed:

[Laughing] Oh, no.

During Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing:

Breaking News! Jimmy Dean Sausage Co will be renamed GORSUCH SAUSAGE because he's grinding up some Democrat Senators into PURE PORK SAUSAGE!

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 21, 2017

I grew up with Jimmy Dean Sausage commercials, first of all. It’s a little bit of a play on the thought that — there’s the old saying: ‘Two things you should never see made are sausage and laws.’

And it’s also the fact that I thought that while there were many of the Democratic senators — who I’m convinced thought they were just gonna take Gorsuch down and make him totally look like a fool — he came across as a very reasonable, responsible, very thoughtful constitutional scholar. And I was frankly stunned at how little they could go after him and get anything on him. I mean, they just couldn’t seem to lay a glove on him. … And so, for me, it was just a matter of, he ground them up into sausage. I thought it was funny.

After Rachel Maddow revealed two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax return:

Rachel Maddow tonight reveals Amelia Earhart & Jimmy Hoffa are found; they married and had a child–Snoop Dog, who paid no taxes ever!

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 15, 2017

I was embarrassed for Rachel Maddow the night that she breathlessly teased for 23 minutes that she had something really remarkable. And what she found out was that Donald Trump was very, very rich, and he paid a whole lot of money in taxes. And I thought, “Boy, now there’s a revelation for us all. Stop the presses here. Tell the New York Times to hold the front page.” I mean, seriously, I was embarrassed for her. And this will surprise you: I actually like Rachel Maddow. I think she is who she is. She’s good at what she does. And I’ve been on her show in the past and frankly enjoyed it. She was very fair to me when I was on her show.

After now Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted to meeting with the Russian ambassador:

Full disclosure:I have NOT met with Russian AMB, but did have Russian dressing on a salad last September. I'll recuse from salads for a week

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 3, 2017

Yeah. [Laughs] Well, I’ve been amazed at how this whole Russian theme has just dominated so much of the conversation about Donald Trump. As if, you know, Donald Trump is two-stepping down Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower to Central Park every morning and making a secret phone call to Putin. With no evidence. … And, you know, to keep pretending that they interfered in our elections, I’m thinking, well I’m sure if they did, they wish they hadn’t, because Trump is not exactly making them wanna give him the “Friend of Russia Award” right now.

During the Oscars:

Watch celebs spew ignorant political venom at Oscars?? Nah…think I'd rather have a colonoscopy. Both happen from same location.

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) February 26, 2017

[Laughs] Yeah. Yeah, that one got a lot more reaction than I thought it would. First of all, I’m a movie fan. I love film … but if I watch the art of a movie, I don’t really care what the actor’s politics are. That’s not why I’m watching. And I’m watching their art. And their politics is their business and that’s fine. When they try to impose it on me in the context of the Oscars and turn something that oughta be the celebration of their art into almost some self-immolation, setting themselves on fire about who got elected, I just wanna say, you’re ruining your own moment here. You know, just go up and take the award and thank the people that helped you get it and let us enjoy your craft and your brilliance at doing it.

Last month:

I Tweet for my amusement and your amazement. To haters trolls and humorless people-you really shouldn't follow me. It's way over your head!

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 21, 2017

[Laughs] Yeah, you know, one of the things that amazes me most is that everyday I probably have a hundred people tell me, “Delete your account,” “Why are you doing this?” “You’re not funny,” “You’re miserable.” And I’m thinking, “Last time I checked, there’s not a single law in any one of the 50 states that require you to follow me on Twitter.” So, if this is killing you, if it is absolutely causing you to be constipated, then for heaven sakes, get off my Twitter feed. Just go follow somebody that will let you go freely. But leave me alone! I mean, that’s what I don’t understand. … I find it absurd that people act like they have the right to shut down someone else’s speech. Now, it’s different if I’m holding them hostage, and if by law they had to read my tweets everyday. Sure, I’d get that they would be upset.

Your jokes are almost always current events, mostly political happenings. Is there any subject matter you consider off-limits?

You know, a lot of the comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld, won’t even play college campuses anymore because everybody gets offended by every joke. And I realize that comedy can be offensive. I think it’s one of the great aspects of free speech is that people should have some leeway in saying things, even offensive things. And if it’s truly offensive, and somebody can point out why it’s so offensive, then they can apologize for it. But I think a lot of the people’s hurts that they demand an apology for, it’s manufactured. They’re not really hurt. They’re not personally injured by it. Their feelings aren’t so shattered that they’re not gonna be able to have breakfast in the morning. And I just find it’s absurd and I want everybody to grow up and say, look, people say things all the time. My entire life, I had people say things that were intended to hurt me.

Have you ever tweeted something you later regretted or admit now wasn’t a good joke?

Oh, I’ve done a lot that, later on, I thought, That was really stupid. And my kids are usually the ones who are the first to either text me or call me or email and say, “Dad, are you serious? We’re gonna take the Twitter account away from you.” You know kids. Yeah, they’re my worst critics. [Laughs]

What’s the reaction like from your family, friends, and staff?

Normally, it’s, they roll their eyes and sometimes they just tell me, please, don’t do that again. But, you know, that’s OK. Occasionally they actually think something I did was funny.

You mentioned Jerry Seinfeld earlier. Do you have any favorite comedians?

Oh, there’s a lot. Seinfeld is great. I saw him in concert, he was just amazing. And … I like some of the old-school comedians. The days of Alan King, who was so funny back on the Ed Sullivan show when I was a kid and would watch stuff like that. Rita Rudner is to me one of the funniest people alive, because she’s so subtle and none of her humor is over-the-top. It’s not profane; it’s clean, but it’s hilarious. … I like it when people make me laugh because what they said is just so stinking funny. And, you know, to me, Seinfeld is that brand of comedian.

Finally, the president is an avid Twitter user. Do you have any tips for him?

[Laughs] You think he would listen if I gave him any? [Laughs] You know, I know a lot of people have been on him for it and, you know, sometimes he’ll tweet something and I’m thinking, “Uh-oh, that’s gonna leave a mark.”

But here’s my assessment of it: It’s been so rare that we’ve ever been able to kind of know what a president really thinks. Because they’re so scripted, they’re so controlled — they are so inside this very thick bubble and protected by so many people in the palace guard — that the president really is not a real person anymore. So, I find it incredibly refreshing that this president is allowing us, even when we kind of go, “Uh-oh,” and even recoil at what he might say, that we have a real clear picture. Hey, this is a real human being with passions and feelings, and he has reactions.

And I find it refreshing, because the American president was never intended to be royalty, removed from the people, but rather a servant of the people and a reflection of them. And so, rather than hope that he gives away his Twitter and never does another tweet again, I find it refreshing.

[thisdaynews]

Why Trump Should Be Thanking Alec Baldwin

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/why-trump-should-be-thanking-alec-baldwin/

Why Trump Should Be Thanking Alec Baldwin

No one in American politics understands the dark art of ridicule better than Donald Trump. (“Welcome to the race, Sleepy Joe.”) And when it comes to seeing himself on the receiving end, nobody in American politics has a thinner skin. His fury at President Barack Obama’s roasting of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner may have motivated his own run for the presidency. More recently, his sensitivity to ridicule has been on sharp display in his seething reaction to Alec Baldwin’s running impression over the past three years on “Saturday Night Live.”

Baldwin has carved out a late-career niche as the nation’s highest-profile interpreter of Trump. For most viewers, his performance, all preening and bluster, has settled into comedy-staple territory. And for most presidents, rolling with SNL’s punches is just another part of the job. Neither is true for this particular viewer-in-chief. The performance gets further under Trump’s skin with each passing season.

Story Continued Below

“Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!” he tweeted on October 16, 2016, three weeks before winning the election. By early 2018, safely ensconced in the White House, Trump was still taking it personally: “Alec Baldwin, whose dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing me was agony. Alec, it was agony for those who were forced to watch.”

This year, Trump was back decrying the unfairness of it all, to the point of calling for an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution.”

The SNL season wraps up on Saturday, with many fans wondering whether Baldwin will make an appearance. His sketches are by now guaranteed crowd-pleasers, expertly crafted portraits of the inner boob behind the blowhard. They’re eye and ear candy for the mostly liberal urban sophisticates at whom the show is aimed. But if those viewers think they’re watching an evisceration of Trump, they should look more closely at what the sketches are really saying about their nemesis. And while it’s certainly within the president’s rights to refuse to laugh along, he’s dead wrong in suggesting that Baldwin’s portrayal is politically damaging. In fact, it may be one of the best things he has going for him.

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The sheer relentlessness of Trump’s disdain suggests that Baldwin’s impersonation must go beyond satire into something more subversive—that the 61-year-old actor is spewing poisonous propaganda against a duly elected leader. But to look back over the full Baldwin/Trump oeuvre since 2016 is to realize just how tame it is—and, in an important way, what a favor it does the president. Baldwin’s Trump bears a closer resemblance to the befuddled governor on the old “Benson” sitcom than it does “Dr. Strangelove” or “The Manchurian Candidate” or any other of the darker historical figures to whom he’s been compared. In Baldwin’s hands he’s foolish and self-deluded, all right, but he also sometimes seems abashed by the reactions he provokes and the trouble he accidentally stirs up. (“It’s awful. Everything’s falling apart. Sometimes I wish I had never been president,” he moans at the start of an “It’s a Wonderful Life” parody; “All alone again. No one understands me,” he sighs in a skit on his trip to South America.)

By giving Trump qualities he’s shown little evidence of in public—conscience, introspection, even regret— “SNL” does him an enormous favor. It offers a glimmer of sympathy about his motives, inviting the generous assumption that there’s a better and more self-aware man lurking behind the Twitter feed. In portraying the president as a beleaguered figure, it even allows the conclusion that the real threat to democracy isn’t Trump’s venomous rhetoric or disregard for constitutional norms, but the ruthlessness of the Washington system that confronts this blustering, fumbling uncle.

Now, as House Democrats debate the level of the president’s culpability for a series of actions that might reasonably appear to be attempts to obstruct justice, the “SNL” skits seem like grounds for exculpation. In the wake of the Mueller report, politicians, along with average Americans, are struggling to separate two competing notions of Trump—the fast-talking interloper who just got in over his head on some legal stuff, and Trump the deliberate lawbreaker. For instance, when the new president asked Chris Christie to tell then-FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, how much he liked him and considered him “part of the team,” did he know—as Christie, a former U.S. attorney, immediately did—that the request was inappropriate?

Baldwin’s characterization, as harshly as it may be intended by the actor and the writers who shape it, offers up an answer to that kind of question: No, of course, he had no idea. It’s a picture of the president as an uncomprehending naif. In the high-stakes argument about his fitness for the presidency, it amounts to an exhibit for the defense. Perhaps Trump should be thanking Baldwin, not threatening him.

The hidden influence of this kind of comedy, the widely seen late-night material that ends up as YouTube clips and watercooler fodder, lies in its ability to shape a narrative outside the news, interpreting people’s motives rather than just character. The comedian professes to peel off coats of varnish and reveal an essential but hidden truth. Often that truth is anodyne but amusing, and becomes an instant trope—a predictable laugh line, like Bill Clinton’s lustfulness. Baldwin’s vain but incompetent Trump is well within this tradition, with the audience chuckling along with his every ego-shattering overreach. But the long history of late-night comedy, especially the 44 years of “SNL,” shows that sometimes these comedy missiles really do land on the target. That’s the charge that Trump is leveling against Baldwin and “SNL.” He’s right about the power of late-night hit jobs. He’s just wrong in pitching himself as a victim.

***

Like many great satirical portrayals, Baldwin’s Trump is built around a single mannerism that isn’t so much copied from life as interpreted to express an inner truth. When this Trump messes up, his lips turn into a stupefied O. This gesture of surprise—the signature of Baldwin’s portrayal, which draws the biggest guffaws—usually comes when Baldwin/Trump does something impetuous (such as naming Kanye West his new strategist) or merely embarrassing (picking up a phone and finding Stormy Daniels on the line).

The narrative that emerges from three years of Baldwin’s Trump skits is that of an overeager salesman who gets swept up by a political wave he can’t control and washes ashore at the White House, the unintended victim of his own stunt. There he is, armed with nothing but his reserve tank of bluster and bravado, trying to brave his way through a job for which he is manifestly unprepared.

Like the subgenre of political movies in which average guys accidentally end up president, typified by “Dave,” the Trump sketches on “SNL” are essentially fish-out-of-water comedies. The humor comes from watching the imposter fake his way through the White House obstacle course. That may not be entirely flattering to Trump, but it is closer to his own view of his situation—which he once described as “surreal”—than to that of his most worried critics. For the jokes to work, the audience has to sympathize, at least a little, with his predicament.

For a franchise built on having an edge, especially when it comes to culture and politics, it might feel like “SNL” has gone soft. But despite its reputation for pushing boundaries, earned mostly in its early, pathbreaking days, “SNL” has only rarely been a source of political blasphemy. When it comes to public figures, it draws more giggles than gasps.

Over its four-plus decades, the show has cut down eight presidents (nine, if you count its early retrospective Nixon skits) and dozens of candidates, all without drawing much electoral blood. Its skits about Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were built around great comic turns by Darrell Hammond and Will Ferrell, but otherwise tracked closely to other late-night depictions of Clinton as louche and Bush as a dim-witted cowboy; “SNL” only added to the archetypes. That was better than it fared during the eight-year presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, who were their own archetypes. The show failed to produce consistently funny portraits, striking pure comedy gold only once in those years, in the late Phil Hartman’s memorable “Reagan Mastermind” sketch at the height of the Iran-Contra era. The joke then, unlike today, was that the president might actually be a master of self-control.

Dana Carvey’s memorably wacky, way-out-there take of George H.W. Bush remains a milestone of comic impersonation, though it’s arguable whether it had any political impact; the same with Dan Aykroyd’s know-it-all Jimmy Carter.

In retrospect, the show’s most politically lethal presidential portrait was its very first. When what was then known as “NBC’s Saturday Night” went on the air in October 1975, Gerald Ford had been in the White House a little more than a year, and America still wasn’t sure what it had gotten in its first unelected president. The amiable Ford arrived with a barrel full of goodwill from his decades as a popular House leader, but struggled to project himself on a broader stage. “Saturday Night” filled in the gaps. A former college football player (at the University of Michigan, no less), Ford was one of the country’s most athletic chief executives. Assuming the presidency at 61, he spent his vacations slaloming down the slopes of Vail rather than sipping wine on Martha’s Vineyard. But one of those ski trips included a rather mundane spill caught on camera, which combined with another slip when he carried his own umbrella down the rain-soaked steps of Air Force One to make a trend.

Enter Chevy Chase, the floppy-haired, insouciant writer and sketch comedian who became the show’s first star. He started interpolating falls in which the president tumbles within an inch of his life only to emerge with his chin high, his expression a Peter Sellers-like deadpan. Pretty soon, the show’s opening act every week was Ford falling down, and Chase began enacting other made-up gestures of presidential clumsiness, like hearing a phone ring and putting a full water glass to his ear. The message sank in: The unelected president was truly an accidental president.

Ford never quite survived that depiction; Chevy Chase’s falls cut him down to size, emphasizing his ordinariness. They became the physical expression of his illegitimacy and lack of charisma. When Ford lost the 1976 election by 2 percentage points, one could argue that “SNL”’s role in shaping his image had really hurt him.

Nonetheless, the good-natured Ford praised Chase and even appeared briefly on the show, thereby cementing his nice-guy reputation. In so doing, he started a trend in which the targets of “SNL” skits gritted their teeth and pretended to play along with the joke. George H.W. Bush invited Carvey to perform for his White House staff; in characteristic Bush fashion, a friendship ensued that lasted 25 years.

No doubt someone told the stories about Ford and George H.W. Bush to Sarah Palin, the subject of an epic impersonation by Tina Fey that was both as inspired as Carvey’s Bush and as devastating as Chase’s Ford. The real-life Alaskan governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate appeared on the show, looking like she’d rather be elsewhere, and offered a few uneasy one-liners, but the good-sport vibe didn’t carry over: Viewers kept laughing at her, not with her.

Palin’s flop didn’t deter the Hillary Clinton of 2016 from trying her own version of the Ford approach for dealing with “SNL,” appearing as a world-weary bartender while Kate McKinnon, playing Clinton, soaked up her advice. It was a funny moment, and the real Clinton looked reassuringly human standing behind a bar and calling herself Val. But like a dash of spritzer in a very dry wine, it barely reduced the acidity of McKinnon’s years of skits mocking Clinton as power-hungry and insincere. In interviews, McKinnon has expressed her admiration for Clinton, and no one doubts her sincerity. But McKinnon happens to be the most unsparing of caricature artists, a sketch-comedy assassin. Just ask Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham or many other targets of her image-shaping lacerations.

Trump may have been the one grumbling, but Clinton was on the losing end of 2016’s “SNL” primary. A transparently phony, cackling laugh; a finger wave that managed to be both withholding and condescending; an unquenchable thirst for power that provided the undercurrent for almost every skit: This was the Clinton-from-hell of voters’ nightmares, just plausible enough to settle over the campaign like an indictment. (If you aren’t convinced, just compare with the far more flattering, earnest Clinton portrayed by Amy Poehler during her 2008 run.) Yes, McKinnon’s Clinton was better-informed and far, far smarter than Trump—that was the rub, however. Where was her moral core? McKinnon provided an answer: ruthless ambition.

Like Chevy Chase and Tina Fey, Kate McKinnon is a writer as well as a performer, and her characterizations seem to come from somewhere outside her own persona: They’re like a few devastating paragraphs in a satirical novel. Alec Baldwin followed a different path to fame. He was a cinematic leading man who grew into a character actor. He learned in the proving ground of situation comedy how to show glimpses of humanity in otherwise objectionable figures—thus securing at least a winking share of the audience’s affection. That put Trump in the hands of a gentler satirist.

Despite his well-known aversion to the president—he has said it pains him to play Trump, and has described the president as a con man, a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin and worse—Baldwin unconsciously allows some of himself to spill over into his Trump. When Baldwin’s Trump listens to a barely coherent ramble from Kanye West in a sketch from late last year, he is in on the joke. “Oooh, this guy might be cuckoo,” he says to himself, in one of Baldwin’s verbal thought bubbles. He compares West to Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un (“and they made a lot more sense than him”) before musing, “He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t listen to anyone but himself. Who does he remind me of? Oh my God, he’s black me!”

***

If these types of self-aware interior monologuesserve a humanizing function, warming up Trump’s image, why is he complaining? One reason is, of course, Trump’s renegade populism, which requires enemies. Trump has to appear as the victim of powerful elites in order to define himself by what he’s up against. His assault on Baldwin and “SNL” is of a piece with his similar rants against Jim Acosta and CNN.

There’s also vanity. Attacks on Trump’s competence and intelligence land on sore spots. For a candidate who scores his best numbers, by far, among the demographic that never attended college, he’s surprisingly quick to assert his Ivy League bona fides. He even ordered Michael Cohen to keep his educational transcripts under wraps, lest any bad grades from half a century ago find their way into the media.

These two possible explanations for Trump’s attacks on Baldwin frame the key question of his presidency, the one people are grappling with in post-Mueller Washington: Is Trump calculating, or is he improvising?

Trump-the-calculator presumably knew that his out-of-the-box praise for Putin during the 2016 campaign would increase his chances of a lucrative score with Trump Tower Moscow, using one of the sacred rituals of American democracy for his business advantage. Trump-the-improviser was just faking his way through, letting politics and business become intertwined mostly because he was acting on instinct and didn’t know the guardrails.

What appears to be authenticity is one of Trump’s greatest electoral calling cards, and Republicans tend to take it at face value. He’s an amateur in a professional game, and that explains why he sometimes breaks the rules. There’s a kind of everyman logic behind his actions, and his supporters want him to shake up the system. Despite their antipathy toward him, there are many Democrats who assess him on similar terms. In their eyes, Trump is woefully, agonizingly, even dangerously unqualified for the presidency, but he’s not fundamentally ill-intentioned, except perhaps in some of his prejudices. This may seem to them like a devastating judgment, which is embedded in Baldwin’s portrayal on “SNL.”

But there are, of course, much harsher assessments of Trump. One, suggested by the Mueller report, is of a man who willfully used the tools of his office for his personal benefit, who demanded illegal and unethicalacts from his subordinates, threatened them and tried to replace them when they refused to go along and shredded legal and political norms in the process. In trying to save himself, that version of Trump isn’t some rogue elephant acting on instinct, but a narcissist who puts his own interests ahead of the country’s. There is, presumably, no twinkle in Trump’s eye when he orders his Treasury secretary to refuse a congressional subpoena of his tax records, no sharp intake of breath when he invokes executive privilege to shield an investigation into his own campaign. His mouth doesn’t twist into a petrified O when he maligns Robert Mueller or calls on Republican appointees of the Supreme Court to protect him.

This Trump isn’t the stuff of caricature, or the hapless figure of fun portrayed on “SNL.” He’s the one who shows up on TV nearly every day, president of the United States despite the disdain of all those knowing elites, bending Washington to his will.

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[cynthiajayusa]

Adam Devine Talks Thirsty Gay Following, Being a ‘Bear Cub’

Even now, Adam Devine just wants to dance with some bodies. So, as Josh in Isn’t it Romantic, the comedian known for flexing his funny-guy chops in Comedy Central’s Workaholics (which he also co-wrote) and ABC’s Modern Family, keeps the love strong with Pitch Perfect co-star Rebel Wilson in their new self-aware anti-rom-com. With assists from a satirical gay sidekick (Brandon Scott Jones of NBC’s The Good Place) and Whitney Houston and Madonna musical numbers, the film also stars, of course, Liam Hemsworth as the man of everyone’s dreams – though, in this case, the unconscious literal one that Wilson’s Natalie falls into.

During a recent call, Devine spoke about his bear-cub identity, tactfully tackling LGBTQ storylines and the popularity of his penis on gay blogs.

Charming rom-com, Adam, but where’s the movie where you end up with the gay sidekick?

(Laughs) Maybe that’s the sequel.

That’s the movie Hollywood needs to make next.

Yeah, you might be right.

In your version of that movie, what guy would play the sidekick you fall for?

I mean, Liam. If I’m a gay dude, I want the hunk. I’m goin’ hunky!

You get to a do a Whitney and Madonna musical number in the movie. Do you know enough gay men to know that these women are gay icons?

I do, yeah. I’ve got a good handful of gay friends and they keep me abreast of what’s hot in the gay culture: Whitney, Britney Spears also. We should’ve done a Britney Spears tribute.

What was your earliest exposure to the LGBTQ community?

I guess my cousin came out as gay and I was much younger than him and that was the first time that I knew anyone who was gay. He came out to the family and then we all knew, and then you’d see him at holidays and stuff and it was cool. You’re like, “Oh, I love my cousin, he’s the man, and he’s a great guy.” It normalized the whole thing.

Do you hear from LGBTQ fans on Twitter?

Yeah, I do sometimes. I’ve been told that I’m a bear cub, so I’m not a full-on bear. I think I’m too tiny, so I’m a bear cub is what my gay buddies tell me.

You don’t seem to have enough body hair to be a bear cub.

Well, I’m not afraid to ‘scape. I manscape. And I think that’s important. I don’t want puffy t-shirts, that’s the issue. That’s the reason I do it.

You don’t want hair lumps.

Yeah, I don’t want weird puffs around my nipples from my hair, so I gotta maintain.

Your role in Game Over, Man!, particularly your full-frontal scene: What did that do for your gay following?

(Laughs) I noticed some fan blogs, and I’m like, “Oh, cool, a fan blog, they’re spreading the word,” and then I’m just like, “Oh, it’s very gay and it’s just every naked photo I’ve ever taken.”

So by fan blog you mean GayTube.com?

Yeah, basically. I’m not sure if that’s the one, but yes.

If you go to an Adam Devine story on an LGBTQ website, you’ll likely find some guys in the comments crushing on you. One gay commenter noted your role on Modern Family and that your brand of adorkable is one he finds sexy.

I love it.

How often does that interest from gay men translate to real life? Do guys hit on you?

No, I don’t think so. I mean, I have a girlfriend. I think it’s known that I don’t go that way. But, admittedly, gay guys don’t care – they swing for the fence. I think straight guys need to learn something from the gay community. They’re so afraid!

Is the first gay thing you did in your professional life an episode of The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman called “Dykes Like Us” or does your pro-gay history go back even further?

(Laughs) I guess that is the first thing!

Tell me about that experience.

You know, I don’t even remember – I had such a small part on that show. (Creator) Laura (Kightlinger) cast me in it and she was just really cool and great. We ended up casting her as a MILF who uses me for sex on Workaholics and it turns out I can’t handle it. It’s too much. I can’t handle everything she’s giving me.

Regarding your role in Pitch Perfect, Rebel once told me: “I think most of the Treblemakers, the boy band, are gay. What about that scene where there’s, like, nine dudes in a hot tub … naked? That’s totally gay.” Can we explore this? Is it gay for dudes who love a cappella to be in a hot tub together?

If they are f*cking each other it is. But just to sit in a hot tub, that could go any which way!

How does kissing Rebel compare to kissing Zac Efron?

Weirdly, same amount of lip gloss. (Laughs)

Cherry?

Vanilla! Boysenberry! With Rebel it lasts a little longer; with Zac it was one brother kissing another brother, so it wasn’t a sensual kiss in any way.

In an episode of Workaholics called “Gayborhood” you and your buddies inadvertently end up in Palm Springs for a Pride party that you don’t know is a gay Pride party and you guys pretend to be “threeway gay.” Did that episode get you invited to more gay parties?

(Laughs) With Workaholics we really prided ourselves on tackling issues but not really tackling the issues. And we really wanted to make ourselves the butt of every joke. I remember that day this casting director was coming to set and he wanted to meet me. It just so happened to line up on that episode that he was gonna come to set. Everybody was so worried and my manager was worried and they’re like, “We wanna cancel. We wanna do it another day. We don’t want him to get the wrong impression of you as an actor,” and I’m like, “It’s a funny episode and we’re the butt of every joke here. We’re the idiots.” And then he came on set and he was like, “This is the funniest episode of television I’ve ever seen.”

The episode was also well-received by critics. Did that surprise you?

It honestly didn’t because gay guys are cool as hell and they get it and they understand what’s funny and what’s offensive. I think you can’t be offended by everything and you have to have a sense of humor about things. I wasn’t surprised that the gay community has a sense of humor. It meant that we’re doing something right and that people understand what we’re trying to do, and that we’re not just out to be shock comedians, or we’re not crude for crude’s sake. It all comes from a good place… and I think the shock was that it came from us. Like, people on the outside looking in, you probably wouldn’t think that we’d be the guys to deliver that sort of message. But hey, turns out we are!

For that episode, how was it determined that you look more like a bottom?

Oh, I think in the writers’ room that’s what happened. (Laughs) I don’t know how or why. I think my ass is kind of on and poppin’, so that must’ve been it.

In general, how conscious are you of finding the balance between what can pass as gay humor and what can be perceived as offensive to the LGBTQ community?

We all have gay friends, and if you think maybe they could take this the wrong way – we don’t want to alienate anyone or make anyone feel like they’re not in on the joke – then you just check in with your gay buds and say, like, “Hey, what do you think of this? Is this funny or is this weird?” People aren’t afraid to tell you the truth if you’re upfront and honest with them.

Jumping back to Isn’t It Romantic, I’m glad to see the movie is inclusive and there’s a fun gay sidekick, but I’m gonna hold you to this rom-com where you and Liam are romantic leads.

(Laughs) I’ve got the idea for the spinoff!

You can credit me, but also you don’t have to because after Love, Simon I just want our community to have more rom-coms with lead characters who happen to be gay.

I’m with you. Where it’s not something that is kept in the closet or that anyone’s ashamed about. It’s just loud and proud. I like that idea.

source https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2019/03/14/adam-devine-talks-thirsty-gay-following-being-a-bear-cub/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazin.blogspot.com/2019/03/adam-devine-talks-thirsty-gay-following.html

[demitgibbs]

Adam Devine Talks Thirsty Gay Following, Being a ‘Bear Cub’

Even now, Adam Devine just wants to dance with some bodies. So, as Josh in Isn’t it Romantic, the comedian known for flexing his funny-guy chops in Comedy Central’s Workaholics (which he also co-wrote) and ABC’s Modern Family, keeps the love strong with Pitch Perfect co-star Rebel Wilson in their new self-aware anti-rom-com. With assists from a satirical gay sidekick (Brandon Scott Jones of NBC’s The Good Place) and Whitney Houston and Madonna musical numbers, the film also stars, of course, Liam Hemsworth as the man of everyone’s dreams – though, in this case, the unconscious literal one that Wilson’s Natalie falls into.

During a recent call, Devine spoke about his bear-cub identity, tactfully tackling LGBTQ storylines and the popularity of his penis on gay blogs.

Charming rom-com, Adam, but where’s the movie where you end up with the gay sidekick?

(Laughs) Maybe that’s the sequel.

That’s the movie Hollywood needs to make next.

Yeah, you might be right.

In your version of that movie, what guy would play the sidekick you fall for?

I mean, Liam. If I’m a gay dude, I want the hunk. I’m goin’ hunky!

You get to a do a Whitney and Madonna musical number in the movie. Do you know enough gay men to know that these women are gay icons?

I do, yeah. I’ve got a good handful of gay friends and they keep me abreast of what’s hot in the gay culture: Whitney, Britney Spears also. We should’ve done a Britney Spears tribute.

What was your earliest exposure to the LGBTQ community?

I guess my cousin came out as gay and I was much younger than him and that was the first time that I knew anyone who was gay. He came out to the family and then we all knew, and then you’d see him at holidays and stuff and it was cool. You’re like, “Oh, I love my cousin, he’s the man, and he’s a great guy.” It normalized the whole thing.

Do you hear from LGBTQ fans on Twitter?

Yeah, I do sometimes. I’ve been told that I’m a bear cub, so I’m not a full-on bear. I think I’m too tiny, so I’m a bear cub is what my gay buddies tell me.

You don’t seem to have enough body hair to be a bear cub.

Well, I’m not afraid to ‘scape. I manscape. And I think that’s important. I don’t want puffy t-shirts, that’s the issue. That’s the reason I do it.

You don’t want hair lumps.

Yeah, I don’t want weird puffs around my nipples from my hair, so I gotta maintain.

Your role in Game Over, Man!, particularly your full-frontal scene: What did that do for your gay following?

(Laughs) I noticed some fan blogs, and I’m like, “Oh, cool, a fan blog, they’re spreading the word,” and then I’m just like, “Oh, it’s very gay and it’s just every naked photo I’ve ever taken.”

So by fan blog you mean GayTube.com?

Yeah, basically. I’m not sure if that’s the one, but yes.

If you go to an Adam Devine story on an LGBTQ website, you’ll likely find some guys in the comments crushing on you. One gay commenter noted your role on Modern Family and that your brand of adorkable is one he finds sexy.

I love it.

How often does that interest from gay men translate to real life? Do guys hit on you?

No, I don’t think so. I mean, I have a girlfriend. I think it’s known that I don’t go that way. But, admittedly, gay guys don’t care – they swing for the fence. I think straight guys need to learn something from the gay community. They’re so afraid!

Is the first gay thing you did in your professional life an episode of The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman called “Dykes Like Us” or does your pro-gay history go back even further?

(Laughs) I guess that is the first thing!

Tell me about that experience.

You know, I don’t even remember – I had such a small part on that show. (Creator) Laura (Kightlinger) cast me in it and she was just really cool and great. We ended up casting her as a MILF who uses me for sex on Workaholics and it turns out I can’t handle it. It’s too much. I can’t handle everything she’s giving me.

Regarding your role in Pitch Perfect, Rebel once told me: “I think most of the Treblemakers, the boy band, are gay. What about that scene where there’s, like, nine dudes in a hot tub … naked? That’s totally gay.” Can we explore this? Is it gay for dudes who love a cappella to be in a hot tub together?

If they are f*cking each other it is. But just to sit in a hot tub, that could go any which way!

How does kissing Rebel compare to kissing Zac Efron?

Weirdly, same amount of lip gloss. (Laughs)

Cherry?

Vanilla! Boysenberry! With Rebel it lasts a little longer; with Zac it was one brother kissing another brother, so it wasn’t a sensual kiss in any way.

In an episode of Workaholics called “Gayborhood” you and your buddies inadvertently end up in Palm Springs for a Pride party that you don’t know is a gay Pride party and you guys pretend to be “threeway gay.” Did that episode get you invited to more gay parties?

(Laughs) With Workaholics we really prided ourselves on tackling issues but not really tackling the issues. And we really wanted to make ourselves the butt of every joke. I remember that day this casting director was coming to set and he wanted to meet me. It just so happened to line up on that episode that he was gonna come to set. Everybody was so worried and my manager was worried and they’re like, “We wanna cancel. We wanna do it another day. We don’t want him to get the wrong impression of you as an actor,” and I’m like, “It’s a funny episode and we’re the butt of every joke here. We’re the idiots.” And then he came on set and he was like, “This is the funniest episode of television I’ve ever seen.”

The episode was also well-received by critics. Did that surprise you?

It honestly didn’t because gay guys are cool as hell and they get it and they understand what’s funny and what’s offensive. I think you can’t be offended by everything and you have to have a sense of humor about things. I wasn’t surprised that the gay community has a sense of humor. It meant that we’re doing something right and that people understand what we’re trying to do, and that we’re not just out to be shock comedians, or we’re not crude for crude’s sake. It all comes from a good place… and I think the shock was that it came from us. Like, people on the outside looking in, you probably wouldn’t think that we’d be the guys to deliver that sort of message. But hey, turns out we are!

For that episode, how was it determined that you look more like a bottom?

Oh, I think in the writers’ room that’s what happened. (Laughs) I don’t know how or why. I think my ass is kind of on and poppin’, so that must’ve been it.

In general, how conscious are you of finding the balance between what can pass as gay humor and what can be perceived as offensive to the LGBTQ community?

We all have gay friends, and if you think maybe they could take this the wrong way – we don’t want to alienate anyone or make anyone feel like they’re not in on the joke – then you just check in with your gay buds and say, like, “Hey, what do you think of this? Is this funny or is this weird?” People aren’t afraid to tell you the truth if you’re upfront and honest with them.

Jumping back to Isn’t It Romantic, I’m glad to see the movie is inclusive and there’s a fun gay sidekick, but I’m gonna hold you to this rom-com where you and Liam are romantic leads.

(Laughs) I’ve got the idea for the spinoff!

You can credit me, but also you don’t have to because after Love, Simon I just want our community to have more rom-coms with lead characters who happen to be gay.

I’m with you. Where it’s not something that is kept in the closet or that anyone’s ashamed about. It’s just loud and proud. I like that idea.

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2019/03/14/adam-devine-talks-thirsty-gay-following-being-a-bear-cub/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.tumblr.com/post/183450401470